Way back when there really was a Blair's kingsnake

Dennie Miller was excited. He had recently learned of the existence of a “new kingsnake” in Texas. This was the Blair’s kingsnake, a species that, according to the lore and to Dennie, was the “queen of them all."

Now, he, and we (Gordy Johnston and I) were piling into Gordy’s well aged (almost geriatric) VW beetle with Texas’ Hanging Judge Roy Bean’s legendary region our ultimate destination. Our quest—well, you can guess.

And as luck would have it, on that first hunt we succeeded in finding not one but two of those coveted kingsnakes that are now known, after several taxonomic modifications, to be a color variant of the gray-banded kingsnake, Lampropeltis alterna.

The first was a dark phase, and it was found beneath the cattle guard almost at the door of Bill and Doris Chamberlin’s old Langtry gas station.

The second one, much more brilliantly colored, was crossing the Comstock Road.

Dennie surely remembers. Ask him about it. And ask him about ravens and an angora goat, too. Then settle back for an entertaining afternoon’s tirade.

Author, photographer, and columnist Richard Bartlett is one of the most prolific writers on herpetological subjects in the 20th century. With hundreds of books and articles to their credit, Richard and his wife Pat have spent over four decades documenting reptiles both in the field and in captivity. For a list of their current titles, please visit their page in our bookstore.