Nature will often transport a snake over a long distance and deposit it into a new region. This happens when logs are flooded and floated down river for many miles, snakes ride hurricane debris from the Gulf to south Florida or the Keys and back, etc. That is how some of these different locals came to be over countless years. If the new guy in the hood bred the locals, it quickly disappeared into the genetics of the dominant form. That’s all natural. That may be why these snakes are all compatible with each other. It was supposed early on that these “hybrids” would be sterile, but we have learned that is not true. Probably because all these snakes are more closely and maybe literally “related” than previously assumed. If someone crossed a high contrast desert cal with a wide band high contrast Eastern and refined a five foot high contrast "Desert Eastern", I might like that better than either of the two original parents. Maybe a clutch of Easterns hitched a ride on a westward wagon train or box car of lumber and started the whole desert phase anyhow. Talk about going in circles! Who knows?

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