Corns in the wild

My brother living on Big Pine Key in Florida was telling me that he saw corn snakes in his yard all the time. He said they were beautifully colored too. I told him I wanted to see pictures, so he said he would send some the next time he saw a corn. That was two months ago and he said he has not seen a corn since. That's my luck too.

I wish we had Corns up here in the PNW.
Edit to add: Corns in the wild. LOL

I've seen some real nice ones around here, and I always told my wife I want to catch one. She said I should go into my snake room and I could catch 20 right away. LOL. There's just something special about seeing them in the wild.

A lot of people are really getting into corn snakes that are locality specific. A Port Charlotte project could be a neat idea...

You are correct, I have seen locality specific snakes that identify with counties, or even parts of counties. However, those are usually king snakes. I visited with a fellow last year who collects corns from the wild in mainly an agricultural area. He had corns taken from that area that were completely different in appearance. One corn in particular appeared to be a Miami phase, no different than Miami's I have seen that were found way across the state. He had one hypo , one anery and a few I would label normals.

I'm afraid I have not found a locality specific morph in all my herping travels. I've seen some corns that resemble hypos, found a road kill that resembled a ghost, a dark anery, and a couple best described as having a gray background with burgundy saddles. While I don't usually take corns from the wild, I now carry a little kit with me so I can capture a corn and at least take pictures.

Our local corns are quite muddy in color, but I still want to see one in the wild.

I've seen some vibrant colors in the corns around here. Two days ago my son was weeding his flowers and a sub-adult Miami phase slithered out quickly and hid in the rocks. I was bummed because I wanted to see that one.

Many moons ago Connie and I found a DOR corn snake on Pine Island. It was absolutely gorgeous. Seemed to glitter in the sunlight. Bright silver background with flaming red blotches. I looked HARD the short periods of time I was able to visit the island but never saw another corn there.

Corns around here are rather nondescript and nothing to write home about. I believe the gray rat snakes are actually much prettier in this area. If you like gray snakes, of course.

When I lived in Maryland, I did find a few corns in the southern counties of the state, but darn they were ugly. I remember one that I found underneath a board. I just muttered "eewww" and put the board back down over it.

But in some areas the eastern kings were especially pretty. Deep blue black with yellow banding. That was in Calvert County, if I remember correctly.

Oh, almost forgot. I have found some corns around the southern section of the North Port area a long while back when it wasn't as heavily developed, but they were all mostly the typical red on orange variety. The only one I recall being different was one I caught in the Murdock area that was a darker gray background with maroon colored blotches. This particular female was carrying the lavender gene. Unfortunately, Murdock, as a snake hunting locality, just no longer exists. Not unless you think you will be fortunate enough to find a cornsnake on a parking lot underneath a shopping cart.

Many years ago I attempted to apprehend what I think was a Great Plains Ratsnake in a friend's grocery store on the Eastern Plains of Colorado. It was happily soaking up the heat from some compressor coils for the coolers, and scared the tar out of my snake-phobic friend. It was colored, if my memory serves, far brighter than the what is normally seen and at the time I called it a corn snake, because that is all I really knew to call it. Come to find out in my research on corns that they're actually pretty closely related, and a few sources have even suggested they are a corn subspecies, though I have no idea how accurate that claim is.

I was not successful in relocating that particular snake, which escaped into the walls of the store (my friend made me search the basement for it, just in case). He was paranoid for a long time after. A few years later I went back to the store to quote some sign work, and found a large, complete shed of the same species just behind the store. I sent my buddy a picture with the caption of, "It's still here."

I actually still have the shed, you can see the belly checkers on it pretty well.