Spring Sightings

[Faunaofthenorth]

omg dude, we arent trying to school anyone we are just saying that what you are claiming is not absolute in totality, meaning its not set in stone, i have seen SIMILAR, not exact, SIMILAR garters that have markings SIMILAR to chicagos, they are part of the sirtalis family, you will find similar snakes every once in a while

[aSnakeLovinBabe]

omg dude, we arent trying to school anyone we are just saying that what you are claiming is not absolute in totality, meaning its not set in stone, i have seen SIMILAR, not exact, SIMILAR garters that have markings SIMILAR to chicagos, they are part of the sirtalis family, you will find similar snakes every once in a while

yes, similar! that's the whole point! You can see that they are SIMILAR, they are both brown... they both have lateral stripes, some checkers... but they are not the same and the inexperienced are the ones who get them confused. Much like t.s. sirtalis "florida blue" and t.s.similis. Similis are actually named that because they bear a striking resemblance to the blustriped ribbon snake. But they also bear resemblance to the blue easterns that dwell in that area and I see so many snakes incorrectly labeled as similis it makes my head spin! Once you get to know them you clearly see they are nothing alike, and you wonder how people don't see it, because it's so obvious! But at first, even I had trouble distinguishing the two.

[Chulio]

I noticed the picture of the Chicago said it was western Racine county.
I could throw a rock from my Milwaukee county back yard and it would land in Racine county. My wife of 24 years was killed by a drunk driver in Racine county while riding her bike last year.

I may have seen Chicago Garters in the past though. There is a rock area next to the wetland behind my home and I saw some that look like that.
I will take some pictures when they appear in the near future.

I learned more about Garters in this thread than I knew before, thanks everyone.

[aSnakeLovinBabe]

I noticed the picture of the Chicago said it was western Racine county.
I could throw a rock from my Milwaukee county back yard and it would land in Racine county. My wife of 24 years was killed by a drunk driver in Racine county while riding her bike last year.

I may have seen Chicago Garters in the past though. There is a rock area next to the wetland behind my home and I saw some that look like that.
I will take some pictures when they appear in the near future.

I learned more about Garters in this thread than I knew before, thanks everyone.

that is just horrible. I'm so sorry.

[Chulio]

Thanks everybody.
Today was the the first day of the trial and the person plead guilty to homicide by reckless use of a motor vehicle.
I can relax a little now.

[Jeff B]

Man I am sorry about your wife, I can't even imagine how you feel, as much as I cherish my own wife, my deepest condolences to you.
I just wanted to point out that there is likely a lot of integradation between the two sub-species, especially in more borderline/overlapping areas and considering the eastern basically surrounds if not goes right thru the entire chicago range, so my point is that it may not always black and white or cut and dry to define and classify weather a snake (especially in an area or range such as this) fits into the sirtalis semifasciatus or sirtalis sirlalis, but like Joe has pointed out (if Joe says it looks Chicago, then the local authority has spoken, as he has personally seen and put his hands on more true wild semifasciatus than likely anyone out there) the snake in question certainly does have some barring on the side neck, but I think you would agree Joe that we have seen more clearly pronounced barring that runs farther back (you certainly more than me, only had my hands on two semifasiatus personally), so it's even possible the snake in question is a percentage semifasiatus, and that no one argueing on this post is completely right or wrong. The mere fact that semifasiatis has been historically debated of it's even deserving subspecies status in classification, shows us that defining the subspecies has always been a bit of a dicey topic of discussion at best. This is a daily way of open minded objective thinking for me, NOT taking sides here just pointing out some facts, historical data, and possibilities. Honestly in my oppinion without genome maps with good concensus sequence, with conserved regions that show a genetically significant difference between the two sub-species, clearly defining them, followed by sequencing of those differentiation regions of the snake in question, it's a complete morphology guessing game at best. I hope that this kind of work is being done by a grad. student somewhere out there and will be eventually published and then made available to us hobbiest as well. Not that we would be able to feasibly use that data in practise, but rather to see in general if the historical morphology based classification is supported by the nucleic acid sequences. My quess is that for the most part it would be, but even then there might still be shades of gray even at the base pair level that would be argued, lol.

[Mommy2many]

So sorry to hear of the loss of your wife. Welcome to the forum. Nice to have you here.

[jitami]

My wife of 24 years was killed by a drunk driver in Racine county while riding her bike last year.

Ugh... I am so very sorry... I can't even imagine how difficult that would be. My sincere condolences to you and your family.