Miss Marley

[InsanePirateDragon]

Thanks, I was hoping she was one, I wasn't sure between the common and red sided.

From what I've been hearing. A lot of the red sided strands seem to come from the wild caught ones here. Everything I read said that Kansas has the pretty reds for some reason.

And still not popular around here in Kansas.

KS why you no like Garters.

[guidofatherof5]

I've seen some of the Kansas T.s.parietalis. Lots of red. I believe some members have some.

[katach]

"Common" is a name given to the species of T. sirtalis by people that don't really know about the individual species and subspecies. So when you read about common, the red sided falls in that lump category.

[InsanePirateDragon]

Okay, that makes since now. What I've been reading about Garters it always was showing the normal commons and with the red sided or were labeled commons.

[EasternGirl]

Well, I was thinking northwestern or red-sided from the pic...wasn't sure where you were located. Very pretty red-sided she is then. I'm going to let someone who knows more about size with T.s.parietalis guess on the age with the size you have given then...

[InsanePirateDragon]

Okay, still thanks though, any help is better than no help. Still learning all that I can and this forum has been a lot of help already.

And if anyone needs gecko help though, I'm all there.

[katach]

Age is very difficult to tell on WC (wild caught) snakes. If it helps here is a link to the old site's article on T.sirtalis.
Common Garter Snake - Caresheets

[chris-uk]

Thanks, I was hoping she was one, I wasn't sure between the common and red sided.

From what I've been hearing. A lot of the red sided strands seem to come from the wild caught ones here. Everything I read said that Kansas has the pretty reds for some reason.

And still not popular around here in Kansas.

KS why you no like Garters.

Does Kansas tend to have red soil? Just wondering why there's an abundance of red parietalis there.

You'll have to start spreading the word and convert the locals to garters.

[InsanePirateDragon]

Not all that much really, I've never seen that much and I've never been to the western side there's some spots of it but there's more in Oklahoma and more south of Kansas than anything. Out in central KS there's a lot of Harney silt loam, which is the state soil. Kansas is mostly farmland and prairies. But most of the dirt has a lot of clay close to the rivers and water which makes it hard to grow gardens sometimes.

And we do have a lot of sandstone and limestone from when Kansas was underwater. Maybe thats something.

[chris-uk]

Another evolutionary driver is often that harmless snakes start to look like something deadly, bright colours warn away predators. That may have been the driver if it's not a camouflage thing. I wonder what the main predators of parietalis are in Kansas.