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The world's first
Snow Red-Sided Garter
Produced on 4/14/09 see birthing records page. See most current photo 6/13/09 in baby photo page. Ended up with a male/female pair
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Carteret Co. erythristic albino- this is the first year these were produced (2009)
This is a combination morph of Albino and the Erythristic gene, the red-orange color will continue to intensify into adulthood, I can't wait to see what this snake looks like in a year from now. Comparison photos of this snake at birth vs. now demonstrating the color ontogeny of the erythristic gene can be found in the Baby Photos page
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Allow me to introduce myself, this is a photo of myself with my favorite Iowa snow plains garter snake (Thamnophis radix- homozygous albino and homozygous anerythristic) named Ruby. I have been keeping reptiles for over 30yrs. When I was a kid I had garter snakes, turtles, and a caiman.
There's a funny story that my dad enjoys telling about my first pet plains garter snake that I caught while staying on my grandparents farm one summer. I set it up in a 10 gallon aquarium with a screened top, a water dish, dirt and grass substrate and a tin pie pan for a water dish (a less than ideal set-up, but hey I was a kid doing what I thought was best) The main problem with the set up was that there wasn't anything holding the screen top down, so in a few days time the garter snake had escaped and was at large in the house. I spent hours and hours and days looking all over the house for that snake with my dad's help to no avail. Finally we gave up, and after a couple weeks I had completely forgot about that snake. So, my dad and I were in the basement watching TV when all of a sudden we heard a blood curdling scream upstairs from my mom, and I looked at my dad with terror in my eyes thinking that someone was murdering my mother and wondered why he wasn't running to her rescue, but instead he just sat there with an ornery "sh grin" on his face and laughingly said to me, "I think your mother just found your garter snake."
Today some 30+ years later I'm still fascinated by garters, and in the last couple years have become very interested in the various garter snake morphs and breeding them. There are so many different colors and patterns with the morphs available today it's incredible. I am primarily interested with the subspecies that are native to my home area, the plains and red-sided, with the red-sided being the most common locally, but it's hard to ignore all the variety with the easterns.
Spring 2010 Just to list a few of my more exciting projects that I have planned for the upcoming spring, starting with the easterns: erythristic, New York albino, flame, and silver morphs and yet undisclosed combinations of those genes. As well as the granite and hypo granite combo checkereds, and also the radix morphs: Iowa and Nebraska albino, snow, xanthic, anery, also including some new yet undisclosed combos with the red radix. Of course also hope to produce more albino and snow red-sideds again.
Thanks for visiting my web site; I hope you find some educational value and entertainment in it. I really appreciate the feedback from everyone. Thanks to my loving wife for supporting my passion for reptiles.
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