HerpsOfNM
My name's Blurryface...
Who am I kidding...yes it is!
2014 season started on Friday the 13th with 3 of 7 (originally 8, 1 infertile) little heads found poking out at 6:30am from my DeBaca County, NM male X albino female Great Plains rat snake. 4, 5, and 6 joined the world yesterday and I'm still waiting on #7.
Thanks goes out to John Stolz for the lovely, but grumpy albino emoryi female.
Some history on the male. Back in 2002 I was invited for some herping in eastern NM with my best friend, another herping buddy, and a mutual friend of theirs. With permission of some property owners, we began searching a ghost town. The area had some old cisterns, most of which were capped off or in some way inaccessible. The lone one not capped was found by my best friend and resulted in the following:
That's a 30,000 lbs tow strap with my best friend anchoring and our herping buddy guiding me down, since I was the lightest. The mutual friend is the one behind the camera with his son watching as I go down.
As you can see, that wasn't the only snake. Also down there with the emoryi was a western coachwhip. It surprised us as both snakes were thin, yet the coachwhip had not cannibalized (snakes are a known food item of coachwhips) the GP rat.
The "rescue".
This snake is special to me as it was my first NM emoryi and only the 2nd known specimen from DeBaca County. Ironically, the trip's origins tied to the county record animal, which was a gravid female found by the gentleman that snapped the above series. He kept her until she laid her eggs, pickled her for the county record voucher, and incubated the eggs. The trip was planned around the legal re-introduction of her offspring, where mom was originally collected.
Unfortunately for me I've been back a half dozen times to the site where my male was collected, but have yet to locate another emoryi from there.
On to the baby pics....all pre-hatch shed. Hopefully next weekend I'll have the time to be snapping some shots of them in post-hatch shed color.
These babies are HUGE (so were the eggs), weighing in from 11.8 to 14.5g. I think my largest corn babies last year were around the 9g mark.
Speaking of corns, and keeping theme with everyone else, I'll keep adding to this thread as more stuff hatches. Laid the same date (April 18th) as the emoryi eggs were Flicker (Tessera het butter stripe) X Ash (granite, or anery bloodred). 11 of 12 eggs have made it this far, but no pippies yet. :smash:
2014 season started on Friday the 13th with 3 of 7 (originally 8, 1 infertile) little heads found poking out at 6:30am from my DeBaca County, NM male X albino female Great Plains rat snake. 4, 5, and 6 joined the world yesterday and I'm still waiting on #7.
Thanks goes out to John Stolz for the lovely, but grumpy albino emoryi female.
Some history on the male. Back in 2002 I was invited for some herping in eastern NM with my best friend, another herping buddy, and a mutual friend of theirs. With permission of some property owners, we began searching a ghost town. The area had some old cisterns, most of which were capped off or in some way inaccessible. The lone one not capped was found by my best friend and resulted in the following:
That's a 30,000 lbs tow strap with my best friend anchoring and our herping buddy guiding me down, since I was the lightest. The mutual friend is the one behind the camera with his son watching as I go down.
As you can see, that wasn't the only snake. Also down there with the emoryi was a western coachwhip. It surprised us as both snakes were thin, yet the coachwhip had not cannibalized (snakes are a known food item of coachwhips) the GP rat.
The "rescue".
This snake is special to me as it was my first NM emoryi and only the 2nd known specimen from DeBaca County. Ironically, the trip's origins tied to the county record animal, which was a gravid female found by the gentleman that snapped the above series. He kept her until she laid her eggs, pickled her for the county record voucher, and incubated the eggs. The trip was planned around the legal re-introduction of her offspring, where mom was originally collected.
Unfortunately for me I've been back a half dozen times to the site where my male was collected, but have yet to locate another emoryi from there.
On to the baby pics....all pre-hatch shed. Hopefully next weekend I'll have the time to be snapping some shots of them in post-hatch shed color.
These babies are HUGE (so were the eggs), weighing in from 11.8 to 14.5g. I think my largest corn babies last year were around the 9g mark.
Speaking of corns, and keeping theme with everyone else, I'll keep adding to this thread as more stuff hatches. Laid the same date (April 18th) as the emoryi eggs were Flicker (Tessera het butter stripe) X Ash (granite, or anery bloodred). 11 of 12 eggs have made it this far, but no pippies yet. :smash:
