About the Trump area - There was a young adult nigrita x Cal king that was released there back in the late 80s I think. It looked like a whittier morph, nearly patternless with some faint broken pattern. I saw it myself before the person released it. I saw the pic in Hubb's book about kingsnakes. First thing I thought - hey, that sure looks like that nigrita x Cal! Fun theory anyway. I had found a few kings in that field back in the day. All were strongly banded.

Also, there was a farm there back then. Kings from the Central Valley of California were released there in the 50s to control rodents, this according to some records I found in a PV library. True? Not sure, you know how that goes. But that is another potential source of aberrant genes.

All gone now unfortunately, sort of. Trump restored some of it, but it is all coastal sage and coastal chaparral now, with a few very small disjunct patches of grassland here and there. Who knows. My son takes golf lessons there, I look for kings everytime that may have survived the golf course development. Fingers crossed. Who knows, one day. At nearby Terranea, the treefrogs came back somehow after the whole area was plowed and replanted, so I try and hope that some snakes can make it too.

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