At least, that's as far as Scott Felzer, myself, and numerous others I have spoken with say.

In late august of 2007 I was on vacation at Arrowhead Lake in the pocono region of PA. We (my boyfriend and his family) had a lakeside house complete with a canoe, paddleboat, golf kart, and two bicycles. We used them all, even fell out of the canoe into the lake once. But the bicycles were our favorite. A few times a day I would drag him out and we would bike to an edge of this small lake that was bordered by light grey rocks/ boulders.

The area was teeming with thamnophis. Garter snakes everywhere! All we had to do was to walk back and forth at the the edge of the rocks where they met the grass. My first find was an erythristic female. She was the only other snake i dare take from this wonderful place.

On the second to last time we visited these rocks, a very special snake turned up. I was about 15 feet from her upon sighting, and instantly, I knew she was different. She stuck out like a sore thumb amongst the lush emerald blades of grass she was foraging in. But within seconds of spotting her, I was making a MAD dash for her and she in turn was making a mad dash for those rocks! I caught her by the very tip of her tail as she delicately attempted to slip away into a crevice.

Upon picking her up for examination, my boyfriend, who has not long been familiar with the world of snakes, exclaims "what's the matter with it's skin! it looks sick."

But no, she was indeed not sick, but hypomelanistic, or so it is beleived. And to put the icing on the cake, she at that time was carrying a very precious cargo of five little ones! At just fourteen inches, the fact that this garter was carrying young was astonishing for me. She's almost still a baby herself!

So I took her home. A month passes. She gives birth to five bouncing babies. All, as expected, are dark standard looking easterns. Two of them however, have the most peculiar little markings on their heads. On top of their heads between their eyes, they have two little parallel black lines, very close together and about a millimeter in length. They are not something I have ever observed on a garter. Mom shows no sign of these lines. What are they? are they genetic? I didn't think so. Until recently. The two babies that display these lines are slowly lightening up as they grow. Nothing drastic. But it is a noticeable change worth documenting.

Now here we are, it's january, mom is hibernating in preparation for the '08 breeding season and her five children are eating from my hands every three days. I intend to breed back a son to her, to (hopefully) prove the trait.

Instead of describing her to you, why not just show you all some pictures?