Controversial Qestion

Rich Z said:

First time I ever had exposure to hybrids was when Bill Gillingham sent me a bunch of pics of the hybrids he was working with in a price list. I was astonished at how unusual and beautifully unique they were. So I ordered several pairs of them from him.

When I got them, honestly I was rather disappointed, as they didn't look like what I was hoping for. Certainly not the variety I had hoped for. I just wrote it off as my order being at the bottom of the barrel, and sucked it up. So I didn't keep them long. This was before the days of the internet, so it had dawned on me that working with animals that each and every one could wind up looking completely different, with no adequate way of marketing them by description without having to take photos of EVERY one of them and sending those pics to EVERY prospective buyer, really wasn't a very smart business plan. Thanks, but no thanks. So I abandoned that project in a hurry. That was the last and only time I can recall knowingly buying anything that was a hybrid. I just never worked up an interest in them again.

Funny about the rumors you can hear in a business when you are in it for a bunch of years. I remember hearing a rumor that one of the original tri-color breeders of days long past used to keep all of his tricolors together in communal pits, and they would breed haphazardly among themselves. So he never knew exactly what the parentage of the babies actually was. When he sold them, he sold them identified based solely on their looks, and nothing else remotely like locality or actual specific and subspecific identifying physical traits. Again, just a rumor I heard, and completely unsubstantiated.

Now another rumor that I heard directly from the horse's mouth, was at one of the Tampa reptile shows. It was a piss poor show (as usual), and I had a brought a bunch of baby (non feeding) gray banded king snakes that I had to move out to people with more time on their hands than I had. Had another vendor come by and offered to buy all of them at the end of the show if I would cut him a deal. Sure... I didn't want to take them back home and fuss with them trying to get them feeding. I didn't sell even one of them, so at the end of the show, I packed the whole lot of them over to his tables and traded them for greenbacks. While he was looking over the graybands, he chuckled and mentioned to me that he will make a killing on those babies. He told me that every year he takes whatever baby graybanded kings he can buy wholesale, then rents a room out in west Texas where he sells the heck out of them as "locality" graybanded king snakes to unsuspecting hunters. Truth? Beats me. Perhaps he was just blowing smoke. But it IS what he told me.

So as for hybrids, heck, no one really knows any longer. The waters were muddied up a long LONG time ago. Perhaps some people still fret over it, but honestly, I don't think anyone needs to lose any sleep over it.

And as for locality animals, well, I believe many people know what I think about that. :shrugs:

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Dragonling said:

Heh, yeah the logistics of ensuring documentation is carried along with the animals and the propensity for people to sometimes be dishonest when money is involved is also my reasoning for just sort of admiring hybrids from afar. AND most "true" localities really. It's one thing when it has a recognizeable phenotype, and in some species locality has some discernable meaning, but with corns? Frankly I don't care much where a "Miami" corn's ancestors were captured, as long as it has a sillver background.

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Rich Z said:

Yeah, there is (was?) an area near Wilmington North Carolina where a friend of mine way back when used to hunt for pygmy rattlesnakes. The soil was mostly a reddish colored clay composite, and the pygmies out of that area were just as red as the soil.

Heck, a Caramel corn would be nearly invisible laying among the brown pine needles.

And I've often noticed that many varieties of the Apalachicola kings would look astonishingly similar to a pile of pine cones when coiled up at the base of a pine tree.

And heck, I don't know how many times I have come face to face with a keeled green snake nestled in vines that I didn't see until it snapped into focus right before my eyes.

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Twolunger said:

My brother in the Keys says the Pigmy rattlesnakes he's seen around his little garden pond are pink. I told him I've never seen a pink one, thinking he's talking about an albino, which I'd love to see. I told him to send a picture if he sees another one.

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Twolunger said:

Watch out now. You don't want the moderator kicking you off your own forum. LOL.

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