THE BLUE SNAKE - Wild Trans Pecos Rat Snake Produces Axanthic Blonde
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Wild caught Trans Pecos rat snakes breed and produce a platinum rare bluish phase called the Axanthic blonde. This is the story of one of the first axanthic blonde Trans Pecos rat snakes ever known.
While road cruising in West Texas back in 1993 on a night I found my first trans-pecos rat snakes in dramatic fashion. An adult typical patterned female was captured and I planned to take daylight photos of her the next day. 2-3 hours later in the exact spot I caught the female, a male blonde was sitting in the road wondering where the female had flown off to. I snagged him seconds prior to being smashed by a truck. This is probably my favorite find to this day and just when you think it can't get any better, I put him in the same snake bag with the female and they immediately began mating. I made a rare excepting to bring these snakes home.
Blonde Trans Pecos rat snakes or "subocs" are extremely rare finds and When the first captive clutch hatched, four of the babies were normal, three were blondes and one of those blonde babies was a platinum bluish color. As far as I know, This platinum blue phase was an undocumented phase at the time. I named him "Blue Jeans" and raised him as one of my own while donating his brothers and sisters to the Reptile breeding facility I had previously worked at (Animal House in Houston TX). The breeding pair would yield two more clutches over the next two years before I returned them to their secret native in West Texas. In all, 16 subocs carrying the blue gene were donated to the breeding facility. This bluish platinum phase is called the Xanthic Blonde phase which means "yellow lacking" and can be found in many quality breeding collections around the world. If you see one, there's a likely chance they are from the same genetic line as of Blue Genes. Blue Genes was one of the best snakes I've ever had but after over a decade in captivity I decided to return him and a clutch of his heterozygous offspring with another wild caught female back to the land of his fathers. As much as I love snakes, I personally feel guilty locking them in prison because they are beautiful. The only justification I can make to cage any animal is for conservation purposes, captive breeding and for educating others.