Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Asheville area more or less. A garter? Whatever it is, it has very cool looking markings.

Call me crazy, but that looks like a striped California Kingsnake! Is that an escaped pet?

That is someone's escapee San Diego striped morph California kingsnake (L.getula californiae)....without question!

Or maybe we are being tried here..LOL!

~Doug

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"a snake in the grass is a GOOD thing"

serpentinespecialties.webs.com

No it really is a photo taken by a friend either on Big Laurel creek or the French Broad (he put photos from both runs on a fb gallery). I will have to tell him he took photos of an escaped pet.

I see,....okay......either way it's DEFFINITELY a striped morph Cal. king. They are extremely common in the snake hobby, and have been for decades. Too bad it got loose or set free from a previous owner.

Thanks for sharing the photo.

I still have to wonder what the "M" suffix is all about in the file name. Many folks typically mark photo files with an "M" or "F" to distinguish the sexes of the specimens they took pics of....I know I have countless thousands of pics marked that way. So do hundreds of other snake friends that name and categorize their endless inventory of snake pics they own and/or produce.

~Doug
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"a snake in the grass is a GOOD thing"

serpentinespecialties.webs.com

M = Medium.
Smugmug has a way to get links to several sizes of a photo, up to the original (usually huge) size.

Yes, very true,....forgot about that.
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"a snake in the grass is a GOOD thing"

serpentinespecialties.webs.com

Looks like good ol' Danger Judy is trying to pull our prongs here. I wanted to look at the head real good just for giggles so I transferred it over to a program to blow it up, and noticed the photo file name is: frenchbroadsnake-M[1]

So it's some french broad's male snake.

~Doug
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"a snake in the grass is a GOOD thing"

serpentinespecialties.webs.com

Now in addition to what has been already said about the photo and ID of that particular snake, I will also say that I am aware of (and have several very detailed macro photos) of a truly one-of-a-kind black & white striped Eastern getula that does look strikingly similar to that snake, but am not at liberty to share it. It was found by a very well-known field herper buddy of mine that has found more types of snakes in the eastern region of the country than just about anyone around. But the odds of it being a mutant striped Eastern king (L.g.getula), and not simply someone's very common generic escapee striped Cal. king pet is probably around 1,000,000 to 1 or much greater. Without a very close examination it would have to be considered a San Diego striped morph California Kingsnake (L.g.californiae)

I'm sworn to secrecy regarding the Eastern king photos and any additional details regarding it,...but here is a nice very typical striped Cal. king for comparing to the one there that was photographed. They are also very commonly captive-bred as I stated earlier, but this specimen below was found in San Diego County by my good friend Ross Padilla a while back. He's captured countless different morphs in the Califonia area over the years.

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"a snake in the grass is a GOOD thing"

serpentinespecialties.webs.com