History of Stargazing...
I think I wrote most or all of this in the new book, but would have to actually look it up to jog my memory. But this is my memory of how it began.
I think we were the first to see the defective baby hypo okeetees because the new okeetee hypo morph turned up in our okeetee lines originally. At first, I thought it was just another occasional defect, like a kinked baby that hatches out now and then. But soon, I realized that it was happening in numbers that made it look like a recessive trait. That was one of the reasons I have never crossed them into any other morph - I don't think I have ever "for sure" (enough to convince me) proven out a particular adult sunkissed to NOT be carrying the gene, if that is what it is. After the first few years, I decided I didn't like them THAT much and started keeping fewer. I always felt they looked too much like the old hypo, were generally irritable, and with the stargazing thrown in, why cross to other types? It will be a shame if that stargazing starts showing up in normals and unrelated morphs.
As already stated, the babies will show the problem as soon as they hatch. I have never had a baby that acted completely normally, and then show signs later. However, some show the trait much more than others.
As for the stargazing name, we started using it when we first saw it because the babies behaved very much like I have seen other snakes with neurological problems behave and described as stargazers. I have seen snakes (pythons) with encephalitis, and also had corns years ago that were overdosed with Flagyl and some that were overdosed on No-Pest Strips behave in much the same way. So we just started calling them stargazers for lack of a better term. But I see now it is confusing to name a congenital problem with the same name as the symptoms of an infectious disease or toxic reaction.
