New garter - I just couldn't help myself

[chris-uk]

The colours are grey dorsal stripe, then solid black stripes (no pattern that I could see, although a faint pattern may be visible if I hold him up in brighter daylight, I'll have a better look), then a grayish gradient down to the belly, the belly is silvery grey (either his natural colour or he's starting to grey up for shed).
He looks like the photos you linked to, although neither of the photos are you clearly the same as him. I'll get some photos taken with my camera on macro, rather than snaps from the phone.

[gregmonsta]

perhaps Coast to Coast is the closest but even there it seems to be a second or third line of sales.

.... they again don't care about IDs or the market ... they are part of my 'frustratation' list ... like to sell 'Northern garters' Texas ribbons' and WON'T take correction ... they know best as far as their point of contact on RFUK goes ... an exchange of PMs did nothing and neither did publicly causing a fuss on one of their threads.
As far as the market goes ... he'll happily tell Sjoerd that he can't sell garters in Britain to bash the price down and then sell these CB animals at less than accepted European breeder price. I know we all love a bargain ... but no wonder the British market is dead. Not many people will see the value in/'appreciate' the value in a snake they can pick up privately for £10-15 or, indeed, one that shops don't differenciate the price of CB/WC for.
Anyway ..... parietalis not 100% on sex but this is my male:

[EasternGirl]

Okay...I don't know the conversion from cm to inches off the top of my head...and my mother told me 70cm was a foot and a half...sorry! If that's the case...wow...then, yes...at 18 mos., good size! If there is no pattern...no checkering at all...notice the bit of the checkering under the dorsal stripe in the pics I showed you? Now...mind you...the coloring on your snake looks much different from the coloring of the easterns around here...but...I also noticed after looking at those pics, that the coloring on the easterns farther north of here seem to be different. However...the color you are describing doesn't seem to be consistent with easterns here or farther north really. From what I know, easterns tend to be brown, tan, or green in coloring...not grey or black. Greg is showing you his parietalis... but, the color doesn't sound right for that either. But he would know parietalis better than I would. You know who would probably know...Joe. I bet he could take one look at the snake and tell you what it is.

[aquamentus_11]

2.54cm/inch

[EasternGirl]

Now there is a pic here on this page of eastern garters...second pic down...that shows one with the coloring that you described. But whether or not it is actually an eastern, that I don't know. The info on the page also says they eat insects. The problem is I am limited to the easterns in Delaware and apparently the coloring is different in different areas of the country, and there aren't many reliable books on eastern garter snakes.

eastern garter snake

[EasternGirl]

2.54cm/inch

Ouch, but then you are asking me to do math...something I only do in school when I am forced to do it!

[aquamentus_11]

i would've called that a female too, chris, but i'm no expert. apparently there are easterns that look like that back in Michigan, though i've only ever seen the ones that Marnie described. most of the time we called them ribbons if they were black. I've never seen a Butler's, could that be one or is that stupid?

the ribbons back home, btw, were very pretty. they had a red/brown ribbon underneath their lateral stripes. wish i could find one, but i haven't seen one since i was very young.

[EasternGirl]

It's not stupid...because I was going to suggest it...when I said in my first post that I knew what the snake was...I realized I had seen a snake just like it. It looks just like a T.proximus proximus to me:

P1060892.jpg

[aquamentus_11]

ribbon?

[EasternGirl]

Yep...western ribbon. Now here is the eastern ribbon...T. sauritus sauritus, they look almost exactly alike:

EasternRibbonSnake.jpg I think the eastern is browner and has more of a checkered pattern to it..under the dorsal stripe...which is what I notice about most easterns. The western ribbon looks more of a greyish color, like what Chris was describing of his snake. Of course, this could be a pic of Cee Cee...looking at it...the coloring and all. The thing about ribbons that I have noticed, they tend to be more slender...their heads look longer to me...and their tails are much longer. The area of the top of the body and the lower part of the body tend to be long and slender compared to a garter.