confirm id this cal king?

[sickvenom]

this snake was gifted to me yesterday after the owner walked away from his house, and left him in it. i'm not a kingsnake guy, but from what i can tell, this is a 'blotched' pattern. am i right? it's brown and cream colored.

[infernalis]

Looks almost right, Cali kings are more banded. Could be a hybrid?

It's one great looking snake.

[sickvenom]

Looks almost right, Cali kings are more banded. Could be a hybrid?

this is the link i was going from, which calls it a 'blotched cal king':
BloCalKing (http://www.houstonherp.com/BloCalKing.htm)

It's one great looking snake.

thanks. i was glad i could 'save' it. i guess craigslist isn't all bad!

[infernalis]

Now that I compared, it looks about right.

Thankfully standard Lampropeltis husbandry will work just fine, even if we are a little wrong.

[sickvenom]

hey, infernalis, funny story for you....

today i was out at the river here in phoenix and there was an older fisherman walking around warning everybody of the 'water moccasin' that was swimming around. i looked at it and it was nothing more than a 35" black neck garter. i gave him a polite lesson on the different snakes of arizona, and informed him that we do not have water moccasins here.

[infernalis]

A 35 foot blackneck?? (JK/XD)

I just looked them up.. Have you ever seen my Texas Black Necks?

[sickvenom]

A 35 foot blackneck?? (JK/XD)

yeah, i just fixed that!

I just looked them up.. Have you ever seen my Texas Black Necks?

yes! i have seen a lot of your photos and that's why i thought you'd like the story.

[stephanbakir]

I was in Cuba and caught a 12 foot Cuban boa, they told me it was a "poisonous viper"... never rely on the information given by random people:(

[TCS-bot]

Another handy link for helping with Lamprop identification is this one:
Lampropeltis (http://www.pitt.edu/~mcs2/herp/Lampropeltis.html)

Good few images/linkys on there.

[sickvenom]

great link, thank you.

as infernalis pointed out, it could be a hybrid. the regular blotched king looks nothing like mine. so i'm thinking mine is a hybrid cal king that someone labeled as a 'blotched' pattern. i'm familiar with striped, banded and aberrant, but mine looks like none of those.

[Shmoges]

I had an opportunity to buy several of these beautiful checkered kings but didn't have the housing for it. the contrast of the almost leusistic white to the Mexican king black is stunning on these snakes.

[2006gt]

hey sickvenom i was into kings for a while, that is an aberrant cal king. hope i helped!

[sickvenom]

hey sickvenom i was into kings for a while, that is an aberrant cal king. hope i helped!

Thanks. I believe you are correct. Most of the aberrants I've seen had some stripes on them. I'm guessing mine is more of a man-made pattern.

[2006gt]

All aberrants have a different pattern, aberrant i take means that the pattern is more abstract and not uniform to the natural pattern