Hey guys... I thought I would share this extremely exciting find with all of my garter buddies in case you don't see it elsewhere!
I have been freaking out all day over this. I can't beleive it! This is SO COOL!
I got a call today while at work from my mom. Nobody ever calls me at work. She wanted to tell me about this "pretty little red and white snake" she had just found. My first thought was, have I had anything albino escape? No... so then I thought... someone in my area must have lost their pet corn and now I will be stuck with it! The thought of a eastern milk barely crossed my mind, but I dismissed it because I never thought I could get that lucky. Well... I did. My mom actually did walk out into our yard, and pick up an albino eastern milksnake.
It is a hatchling, a little female, just days old! She crawled out of a little woodpile that is in our yard, it's old, with plywood and tarps and because many garter snakes have called it home for years we have decided to leave it for them. The middle of this woodpile has some moist, falling apart wood that is the most likely candidate for where the eggs were laid. I will be going through the pile tomorrow to see if I can locate any of her brothers and sisters. We live in a secluded area... there is really nowhere else coverage-wise for them to venture to except around my house.
Sorry, but these crappy indoor photos do her no real justice. Her saddles are a bright popping strawberry color.... and her base color is a pale yellowish cream. Then the parts that line the saddles that would normally be black are purplish, and upon closer imspection I realized that she has patches of dark pigmentation all over her... making her a paradox on top of it! Her eyes have red pupils with semi-dark irises similar to my t positive strains of garter snakes. This such a cool find... how did we get this lucky??? This is the third morph animal I have stumbled upon.. there was the hypo eastern garter snake, then the flame eastern, and now THIS?! This is incredible. Here are photos of "Candy" as I call her... not sure what we will do with her yet! I will take better photos of her in natural light tomorrow.
