Okeetee corns

Clay wrote:
"Okeetee is a locality, not a look. An ugly corn picked up on the hunt club is an okeetee regardless, that just can't be argued, the label refers to a place."

So, we're back to Rich Z's question..
"At what arbitrary point in any direction would a corn snake captured there no longer be considered as an "Okeetee Corn"?"
(Sorry, I don't know how to do that lined quote thing.)

And, how do you know if the person who sells the Okeetee picked up a wild "real" Okeetee from that region or if he happened to pick up one of Rich's released snakes?

I thought color morphs in corns were about genetics and the "look" of the animal. Locality specific labels open up too many disscrepancies, such as mentioned above. How are you supposed to sort this out? DNA testing?

I'll have to check with the breeder I got the Okeetee's from and see if he has any papers on them. I think he sold the parents to Ron (one of the regulars here) and I'll ask for a picture of them. When I bought them,they were listed as real Okeetee corns. I did a check in the BOI and the breeder was not listed. However, his friend Ron is and is though highly of. That's why I decided to buy them. Hopefully I didn't make a bad choice.

Dennis

So, we're back to Rich Z's question..
"At what arbitrary point in any direction would a corn snake captured there no longer be considered as an "Okeetee Corn"?"

We'll always be back to that question, it's a futile debate, and as I said earlier one that CAN be applied to any other non insular locality, but strangely isn't. If you catch a Boa constrictor two feet from the Peruvian border heading away, is it Peruvian? What if you watch it move across the border into Peru then catch it? The same argument applies to all localities, and it's no more useful when used for cornsnakes.
I see it basically as the old standby argument used by many who don't want to hold to the true usage of Okeetee as a locality label.
It will never be agreed upon, there is no answer to that question.

And, how do you know if the person who sells the Okeetee picked up a wild "real" Okeetee from that region or if he happened to pick up one of Rich's released snakes?

Considering the number of corns in that area, and the fact that it is highly unlikely that anywhere near enough of them have been released to have any effect, I disregard that argument as well. We're not talking about people releasing them by the hundreds at the front door of the hunt club.

I thought color morphs in corns were about genetics and the "look" of the animal.

That is true, but Okeetee is not a color morph despite how badly so many people try to make it into one. It is a locality and completely independant of how much black is around the borders of the saddles.
If I hatched some nice speckled alterna from generic parents, should I call them Black Gap? No, and if I did the alterna aficiandos would go nuts. Okeetee is no different than Black Gap in the fact it is a locality label designating where in the wild the parents of the animal were taken. Why is it that people have been so bent on changing the rules for corns? What makes a locality label in cornsnakes mean phenotype in the eyes of many, but not other species.
It's the exact same situation you see in Chondros. There are those who will adamantly insist that their Sorong GTP is a direct descendant from that area, and it gets even worse with the more useless labels of Lereh and Wamena etc. They mean nothing but how they look. The difference is in Chondros, most sellers at least do the courtesy of labeling them "Sorong type" and therefore distinguishing them as a phenotype and not as a definate locality.

This will be an eternal problem with cornsnakes, but no matter how many people wrongly label their normal corns as Okeetees to make an extra few dollars on them, it won't make it correct.
It started as a locality label and that's what it remains, regardless of anyones alterted definition of it.

"We're not talking about people releasing them by the hundreds at the front door of the hunt club."

I'm not sure about that. From what I have been told by some who have participated in the practice of releasing the excess hatchlings, I'd say hundreds of captive bred, possible mutation carrying corns HAVE been dumped onto the hunt club, and certainly in the surrounding area and all up and down the eastern seaboard.

I don't like the "okeetee" morph designation. I think it is a real shame that that name was applied to animals, simply because of their "look." However, I have snakes (which I bought as real okeetees), that I have since been unable to prove a genetic line back to the hunt club. I have called them okeetees in the past, and when people call them okeetees, I don't jump out of my skin to correct them. However, before I would sell any snake called "okeetee," I would make very certain that the buyer knew what he was getting: a locality specific okeetee, or a color identified "look-eetee," or something in between that has dubious locality ties.

It's for this reason that I like Kathy Love's designation of "look-eetees" as "Classic Corns." Whether you like her definitions of okeetee versus classic, the fact is that she has tried to draw a distinction so the locality name can stand for something. It is with THAT sentiment that I am in agreement.

What is an okeetee? I don't know . . .what is a bloodred? I think that any time we attach names that are not fitting for that which we are trying to describe, we are in trouble. Why attach a locality name to a coloration? Why attach a color name to a pattern mutation? I mean, is there anything more stupid than talking about an anerythristic bloodred???? I have tried, in vain to get people in the corn community to come up with a different name for the pattern mutation found in all the bloodred morphs (I have even suggested the "Faded Corn"), but there is just no way to fight the historically used terms, wrongly used though they might be. It's just too much like spitting in the wind...no matter how much progress you think you've made, it's going to turn around on you sooner or later!

Words/names do have meaning, but those meanings are determined solely by modern day usage. Gay people in the 50s were happy, and gay people today are homosexual. Nothing changed about that word, "gay" except the usage. So, today, people use the term "okeetee" to refer to the animal's locale origination, but much more often it is used to describe its look. Which one was first? There's no doubt. But if you're asking which one is correct, I have to say that it is whatever definition is most commonly in use int he modern vernacular. You may not like that any more than I do, but I doubt the happy people of the 50s liked the way "gay" went either.

So, what are we going to do? The way I see it, we have two options: We can either try to convince the rest of the corn world to rename the "look-eetees" and leave the okeetee name for the locality specialists, or we can find a different name to refer to the true locale specific snakes.

If we opt for the former, I see nothing but more of the same headache and exasperation ahead of us as a) people who don't care use the term whether we like it or not, b) people who do care refuse to stand up against those who don't), and c) the continual flood of newbies overwhelms the market for years to come, and we never finish educating them about the original errors of okeetee naming.

If we opt for the latter, it will tick us all off royally. But, we will have a much easier time convincing one another about the importance of determining a fitting name for the locality corns. Also, there are fewer of us to spread the word to, and we are not going to constantly be asking questions as to what the distinctions are. Further, from a purely materialistic view (), creating a new, locale specific name will do absolutely nothing but cause all of the people too new to understand the locale distinctions between okeetees and look-eetees to perk up and say, "Wow! I really like this 'new' locale corn called _______ !"

I know no one is going to like this idea, but guys, I really do not see a third option. The name "okeetee" whether we like it or not, has been hijacked, bushwacked, and overtaken. It is gone for all practical purposes. We can either bust our heads against a wall that WILL NOT FALL . . .or we can go in a different direction, defining our own terms as we go. It's really our call.

A lot of good points in this thread, no matter the differing opinions.

I have been toying with the idea of completely dropping locality names from my offerings. I believe the idea from the beginning was ill conceived. I take blame for the "Miami Phase" label, but I have no idea whom first marketed corns using the "Okeetee" label.

Regardless since the whole idea of a locality animal is pointless, based on the fact that there is no way to set a boundary, why bother using a locality name? What is the purpose? If it doesn't matter what it looks like, since all corns from any given area will look variable, even within a given clutch, and there is no way to adequately define the boundaries and the situations governing when and when not the label will be applied to an animal caught in the general vicinity of "ground zero", what purpose is served by even using such names?

Based on the problems that Hypomelanism is throwing at me right now, I am strongly considering even dropping names that point to a specific genetic trait. That really only leaves names that describe what an animal looks like, and from a marketing standpoint, that probably would satisfy the large majority of what people are really after when they want to buy an animal sight unseen.

But I am sure this will be one hell of an uphill battle, for sure.

Speaking of graybanded kings in relation to locality animals, I once related a story on that other site in the grayband forum that had people really up in arms. This is a true story, however:

Several years ago at one of the Tampa shows when Doug Wagner was running it, I was contacted by someone whom was interested in buying all of my gray bands at setup at the show. Feeding or not. Heck that would be a load off of my shoulders, so yes, I went for it. The guy came by, picked up all 20 or so of them and put them out on his table the entire weekend to try to sell them there. At the end of the show, I walked by his table and noted that he had not sold any of them that I could tell.

I chatted with him for a while commenting that it was pretty tough to not have sold any of them, but the guy just shrugged his shoulders and smiled, saying "Heck it doesn't matter to me. I'll just keep them going until Spring time then run out to Texas with them. There is a place where all of the grayband collectors congregate at and I'll be able to get whatever I want for these things claiming they were wild caught in this and that locality. I do it every year and make a killing."

Maybe the guy was full of BS, but I am certain his plan would have worked. However, if it is true, what does that say about how pure the locality of many graybands are? Unless the person caught the animals themselves, they should be highly suspect.

So, no, I don't give any stock in locality data at all. And I will continue to sell that subset of my corns that fullfill my two requirements to be called "Okeetee":

(1) They have a reasonably close appearance to what someone would expect to get, based on typical descriptions of an Okeetee Corn, and

(2) Some of the ancestry of those animals comes from ancestors that I have gotten from people whom told me they were animals truly from the Okeetee area. And no, I have not verified this, and there is absolutely no way on earth to do so either.

Quote from Webslave:
"(2) Some of the ancestry of those animals comes from ancestors that I have gotten from people whom told me they were animals truly from the Okeetee area. And no, I have not verified this, and there is absolutely no way on earth to do so either."

Okay, so based on Webslave's criteria, I'm halfway to having what I could sell as Okeetee snakes. I have a breeder who sold me this lot as Okeetees. I have no reason to believe this person was lying. I'm sure his name would have been all over the BOI otherwise. And, from what you folks have said , there seems to be absolutely NO WAY to verify the original locality of a snake.

Another quote from Webslave:
"(1) They have a reasonably close appearance to what someone would expect to get, based on typical descriptions of an Okeetee Corn"

Now, that brings me to apperance. The breeder said the parents were stunning and very bright. Does an Okeetee have more orange and/or red? Does it have anything to do with the pattern size and shape? What does "bright" mean, as far as colors go? I'd still like to see a pic of what a typical Okeetee looks like. If mine don't seem to conform to that standard, I'll sell them as normal corns. Or, should I use the term "Classic" corn?
I have an adult corn snake here that I bought from a local kid who couldn't afford it anymore. It has a beautiful bright orange and red body. How do I know that that snake didn't originally come from the Okeetee region? Or 2 counties over? Or just across the state line? This whole locality thing seems like a really dumb idea. It's all based on arbitrary points. The only way locality would seem to mean anything is with gealogical boundaries, such as mountain ranges, islands, oceans, etc., not political boundaries. Animals have never seemed to care much for road maps and county lines.


Dennis

This is an F1 female, just finished her pre-laying shed when I snapped the photo... verifiable Okeetee Club ancestery. Two points:

1) Can you find as pretty of a corn in NC, Ga, Fla? Certainly, although it would be a very pretty find for most corns I've encountered in the wild.

2) Would this corn be as valuable if she were caught in Shelby, NC? Perhaps to some, but I wouldn't want her. Honestly.

It's fine by me that some people have no interest in locality. I find it only slightly irritating that Okeetee has turned into a morph in some keepers eyes. What makes me really frustrated is that so many out there answer "yes" when asked if their snakes are locality, when they are het for ten different traits! But it makes me furious that someone would take assorted normals to a collection "hot spot" and lie and cheat enthusiastic collectors who are only out there hunting to establish verifiable locality data. Believe me, it's a lot easier to spend the $50 bucks than to hunt snakes ( even if you don't factor in bad luck, chiggers, fire ants, barbed wire, bad weather, rattlers, no tresspassing signs, etc., ad nauseum!)

I hate being new at things and having to learn so much!!! I've been trying for an hour to post pics of my corns and I keep getting the message back that the file is too big! I've tried cropping the hell out of them and I still get the same error.
Can someone give me an email address that I can send these 2 pics to, so you might post them for me? One pic is of a solitary adult corn. The kid I got it from has no knowledge of genetics morphs or locality data. (neither do I for that matter.)
The second pic is of 2 neonates(?) I purchased seperately. One was sold to me as an Okeetee, the other a normal. Which is which???

Help???

Thanks,
Dennis

Originally posted by SnakeMover
I hate being new at things and having to learn so much!!! I've been trying for an hour to post pics of my corns and I keep getting the message back that the file is too big! I've tried cropping the hell out of them and I still get the same error.
Can someone give me an email address that I can send these 2 pics to, so you might post them for me? One pic is of a solitary adult corn. The kid I got it from has no knowledge of genetics morphs or locality data. (neither do I for that matter.)
The second pic is of 2 neonates(?) I purchased seperately. One was sold to me as an Okeetee, the other a normal. Which is which???

Help???

Thanks,
Dennis

ken@beachsideherps.com

okay, here goes... this is a pic of two babies from different lots. One was sold to me as an Okeetee, the other a normal corn. Which is which?

I bought this corn from a local kid who couldn't afford to keep it anymore. He had it for a year and knows nothing aboutit's background. Putting aside locality data, which couldn't be proven anyway, what does this snake look like? Okeetee or normal?

Thanks,
Dennis