Hi Ginter,

Admittedly, Bob Young and I have never revealed the locality of our snakes. The reason is that all eleven of our wild founder animals came from a tiny six-mile radius, and we were afraid of an influx of collectors. Journal of Herpetology would not accept our paper without us revealing exact localities (!) so we published in the Chicago Herpetological Society Bulletin and Vivarium Magazine.

Although there is no need to reiterate, our animals are 100% pure and I would consider them to definately be "locality" snakes.

I do think there are more fakes out there than you might imagine. I break peoples' hearts all the time because they send me pictures of their snakes hoping that I'll tell them that they've got real ruthveni. Better than 90% of the time I give them my *oppinion* that they possess hybrids. At that point it is up to them to decide their course of action.

It's a tangled web. Bob and I don't produce as many as we used to. No offence to anyone but just we're a couple of old guys who have seen this industry develop over the last fifty years. What the community did to ruthveni broke OUR hearts. So now we enjoy our snakes and when the urge strikes us, we may produce a few. Contrary to what people think, we're not trying to punish anyone. We're just a bit burned out with that aspect of the hobby.

Cheers,

Terry Vandeventer

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