Quote:
Originally Posted by chris68
As the story goes the first whitesided black rat was caught in MD (Harford Co?) by a guy named George Miskimmon (sp). Also was mentioned by a member years ago there was a population containing amelanistics from a certain area in MD...
|
Actually, the first white-sided black rat came from a local biology teacher in Harford County, MD (whose name escapes me at the moment), George got that original animal from him and did the breeding to actually create the initial captive population of them. If I recall correctly, George originally named them "Licorice Black Rat Snakes".
There was also a population of black rat snakes coming from the Lock Raven, MD, area that were brownish in color and called "Rusty Rats". Larry Rouch (who was living in Virginia at the time) worked with those, and it's said that a line of leucistic black rat snakes came out of that stock. But the details are hazy at this late date.