This is a normal, I'm not crazy, right?

So I just bought a breeding pair of het pieds about a month ago, and this is the female. The guy I bought them from kept say she "looks black pastelish" and could possibly be a black pastel. She's clearly not, which isn't a big deal since I just wanted the het pieds. However I'm 99.9999% sure she's just a pretty normal and he's crazy. Opinions?

http://i58.tinypic.com/ms20c0.jpg

http://i58.tinypic.com/et7d01.jpg

She isn't a black pastel,

but she is a very pretty normal het. pied :D

I'm by no means an expert but black pastels have more consistent black and more reddish tone in my experience. so... I don't think you're crazy.

Doesn't look like a black pastel to me.

Not even black pastel-ish.

It's a normal. Or technically a het peid, but still.

It seems to me there are more and more people out there who think every normal they see or own looks like a morph of some kind. I think it traces back to the guys who have been doing this for decades, looking through a batch of imported "normals", picking out a slightly different one and BANG 5 years down the line a new morph appears!! Therefore, all normals MUST be a "morph something", right ?

The reality is, for every one odd looking "normal" that turns out to produce a new morph of some kind, there are thousands that remain "just normals". Even the biggest names in the business can tell you, 99.9 times out of 1oo, the oddish looking baby they snagged from the batch of imports proved to be nothing more than an oddish looking normal. And it has happened more than once, that even a "what the heck is that thing!" import did not reproduce itself. It hatched out a fluke, and not a reproducible trait. And that really would make me sad.

So yes, the guy who sold her to you is a little out there. And I sincerely hope for your sake, they really are het pieds. :please:

Gale

The snake is a normal and I have no idea if you are crazy...

Don't know you well enough to claim your mental status but that is a normal until proven otherwise. :gj:

Thanks, I was pretty sure she was just a normal, although I'm really praying she is an actual het pied. I guess I'll see when she lays this spring,

I can understand how easy it can be to mistake several of the morphs for normals, because I had a yellowbelly male that I had posted pictures of on this forum, and had 10-15 people swear it was a normal, only to have a breeder see it this fall and buy it on the spot because he did end up being a yellowbelly.