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Christmas Snake Excitement

tex540 Dec 26, 2005 09:15 AM

It was Christmas morning at about 10:30. We were just taking a break from playing with our new toys to make some breakfast, when the phone rings. It's my mother in law at the other end. No big surprise, I figure she just wants to wish us merry Christmas and find out what Santa brought everybody, but instead of a holiday greeting she yells into the phone, "There's a snake in our yard!" I get my father in law on the phone who has the snake cornered to keep it away from the dogs. He knows enough to tell me that it not a venomous one, but it is 4ft long and mostly dark colored, then he says "It looks like a Boa." Ok, probably not, but anything's possible. They live about 15 to 20 minutes from us. After getting all three of us dressed, and thanks to light holiday traffic and some "brisk" driving we get there in about 10 minutes. My father in law still has the snake cornered and I immediately know it's a Rat Snake, so I bag it and take it away. My mother in law is scared of snakes and wants it gone. Now I have two rat snakes to release in the spring.

This one has much more orange color then the other one I have right now. Do get they get more orange or red then this one?

Replies (11)

jfirneno Dec 26, 2005 11:49 AM

With respect to amount of orange yes, there is a lot of variation in texas rats. Several people who frequent this site have orange-phase lindies that average lighter and more orange than the average. Hopefully some of them will chime in with photos. Here's a couple of close-ups that I made to distinguish two different "looks" that I saw in offspring I produced.
Regards
John

McCloskey Dec 26, 2005 07:27 PM

Say, maybe you have a breeding pair. I saw the pic of the other one that you wanted to release, and they both look pretty nice. lol

tex540 Dec 27, 2005 12:14 PM

Oh, don't worry, that's already been thought of by my son. It's amazing how fast we can go from "Let's release them in the spring" to "Let's breed them!" I am resisting the urge to have them probed LOL.

Full_Tilt Dec 26, 2005 11:35 PM

double het

Full_Tilt Dec 26, 2005 11:58 PM

Sorry about the bad quality.
my camera sucks

tex540 Dec 27, 2005 12:15 PM

Wow. That's a cool looking snake.

tbrock Dec 27, 2005 08:57 PM

Here's a pic from about a month ago of the female normal I got from you. She and the male are both doing great! They are a lot more orange than the ones I have seen wild around here. -Toby

Full_Tilt Dec 28, 2005 01:05 AM

Yea, I remeber her.
the Y shapes blotch on her back made
her really distinctve.I was actually
debating on keepin a pair from that
clutch. The mother was more of a
reddish then orange. Plus I cut open
one of the eggs, and found a white
snake(it died). But I don't know if
it was a leucistic or if it's color
hadn't developed yet.Know I wish that
I would have kept a pair.I wanted to
see what came out of those babies.
-daniel

Here is a sibling

tbrock Dec 28, 2005 10:13 PM

I plan on breeding them in a couple years and will let you know how the offspring come out. Toby

Full_Tilt Dec 29, 2005 11:06 AM

Tbrock, I don't know if I told you or not.
But those babies came from a wild collected snake.
I kept her in a display with several other texas rats.
Shortly after I collected her I noticed that she was coiled under a log for a long period of time.
When I picked up the log to check on her, she had a clutch of eggs.Which by the way, were very dehydrated.
But they are ok now.
-daniel

byron.d Dec 28, 2005 01:23 AM

here's one produced by Daniel Jarvis from his Orange Phase Hypo line.

This animal is only two colors - orange and brown.

the colors in the photo were not hedged or bumped up at all.

byron.d

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