eastern's

[Scott F]

Hello Richard,

I have given some thought (now here's a concept) as to how to reply to your rude comments and personal attacks. Normally I sit by idly and bite my tongue when I'm brought up negatively in the forum however since I don't have much of a tongue left, I felt a response was in order. Here's Richard's post from 1/30/2011 that I'm responding to:

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But anyway, I wouldn't call amelanistic X melanistic a snow either but that's what they're calling them. Also, Scott isn't exactly the authoritive expert even though people seem to think he is. He often calls snakes something they are not. Time and time again I've been seeing people call melanistic snakes "anery" just because they look like anery radixes do. They seem to think that in order to be melanistic, the snake has to be black and patternless and that's just not true. Melanistic northwesters are often dark charcoal gray and sometimes have a faint dorsal stripe. And quite frankly, I fail to see how an "anery" radix can be anery when it wasn't ever normally red in the first place.

A lot of mislabeling going on and misuse of the terms.

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Just curious as to what snakes or morphs you mean by this statement as you provided no examples-"He often calls snakes something they are not"

Richard's next statement is:

Also, Scott isn't exactly the authoritive expert even though people seem to think he is.

I have been in the thamnophis hobby longer than probably most of you. This doesn't mean squat, just is what it is. I have never proclaimed myself an expert to anyone. If people want to consider me an expert or don't want to, that's up to them.

I have made mistakes on genetics and do acknowledge that. Genetics is not an exact science, which in of itself is one of the major reasons that I enjoy breeding garters....not knowing what you may ultimately produce breeding A to Z.

The amelanistic eastern bred to the melanistic eastern created double hets and these double hets (surprisingly) produced the first snow eastern.
This came as a complete surprise as what Richard stated is normally true (anerythristic x albino) but as you can see from the pics Don provided, they sure look to be snows. I think we would all be interested to hear what you would call this morph ??

Lastly on the anerythristic genetics, I personally have bred an anerythristic plains to albino plains, which created double het for snows, bred these double hets back to one another and created SNOWS. These snows have been proven out w/ 2 different snow plains strains (Nebraska & Iowa snows). I also bred anerythristic red sideds to albinos, and the resulting double hets were then bred together and they also produced snows. These crosses prove, without any doubt, that the "anerythristic" trait is truly just that, anerythristic.

On a side note is the cool thing w/ creating new morphs is that this allows the breeder the luxury to name the new snake/morph whatever they want, be it the tooty fruity garter snake or the triple chocolate wonder morph. I'm making this point not to be grandiose, but to point out that this is a byproduct (and necessity) of creating a new bloodlines/morphs. One has to attach a name to something new.

Scott

[ConcinusMan]

First off, it's not a personal attack. Being high profile as you are, it only made it easier to make my point by choosing a breeder that everyone is familiar with, to make the point. I have nothing against you and no reason to attack you personally and if I did, I wouldn't do it here. Sorry if it seemed to be a personal attack. In retrospect, I should have not named names. Lesson learned. Furthermore, I'm always getting myself into these situations because I say what's on my mind and people get personally offended by it. I'm only saying what quite a few other people are thinking,(I won't name names this time, but you might be surprised who they are if I revealed it) and have agreed with me in one on one conversations. The only reason people don't get pissed off at them, is because they don't say these things in a public forum where others might get bruised egos. I do. People can choose to take it as a personal attack if they wish, but that's not why I say these things.

I am preparing a civil response to your other points. Give me some time and I will explain myself, I promise.

[ConcinusMan]

This is a thread about easterns and so it should remain that way. I'll PM Scott with my responses or perhaps post it in public in a different thread but not here as this would go way off topic. I just want to say I don't have anything against Scott at all. Just labels borrowed from biology placed on morphs in the market when they don't really apply to their original meanings. Some of you who don't visit the forum much, prefer person to person meetings or phone calls, and stay quiet and careful not to step on toes in the forum know what I mean.

Back to Easterns. Someone in a private conversation recently asked me about my interest in eastern garters. In spite of all the morphs and cool breeding projects going on, I haven't really given them much consideration. Sure, the high end flames are cool, but too hot for my comfort. I've seen the albinos, I've seen the yellows and the orange on Don's website, I've seen a lot of them. Kinda funny but I like one particular look and it's not expensive or exotic. What I mean is, often the most appealing easterns to me are in photos of wild caught snakes.

I like the following and would consider paying or trading for easterns that look like this. Anybody got any to trade or sell this season? PM me!

I really like the stripeless or nearly stripeless light colored snakes. Very nice. I even saw one similar to this one but it was green, and another that was pinkish looking. I know, sounds like maritime garters but these were easterns.

[zooplan]

Nice snake ( I can only see one picture).
May I guess it´s a female?
Looks like hypo melanistic and(or) hypo axanthic.
Lacking of the dorsal stripe together with the low contrast is really nice.

[ConcinusMan]

I believe it's one of the hypos that Shannon got last year. One died and then she miraculously found another that was nearly identical. I don't know what sex it is.

Not sure if it's really hypo or if it's just a color/pattern variation. I've seen others found by other people that were very similar.