60+ years ago, when I saw my first eastern kingsnake in New Jersey, I could hardly believe my luck.
Today, some 60 years hence, I can still remember coming southward with Gordy to central New Jersey from Massachusetts on a spring morning and finding big, beautiful, white-chained, black eastern kingsnakes, Lampropeltis getula getula, as they searched and prodded for turtle eggs along the edges of sloughs and marshes. They weren’t numerous there, but it only took the finding of one or two to make a success of the whole trip. Then I can remember other trips when we went further south to the Low Country of southeastern South Carolina and found so many eastern kingsnakes that both my Gordy and I were utterly dismayed. I feel quite certain that although the eastern kingsnakes are still in these areas, they are now less common than in those long ago days.

The memory of Dennie Miller showing Gordy Johnston and me dozens and dozens of eastern black kingsnakes, L. g. nigra, under roadside trash in Arkansas remains indelibly imprinted somewhere in some memory niche. The shiny black snakes were of sullen disposition and sparsely patterned with a vaguely discernible chain pattern and a peppering of light scales on their sides.

And Ron Sayers and I used to shake our heads in disbelief at the vast numbers of speckled kingsnakes, L. g. holbrooki, (their bright yellow pepper-spots fairly glistening against their intense black body color) that we would see beneath debris on the sides of Louisiana levees as we made our periodic herping trips to and from Old Mexico, Texas, and Arizona. These were the good days

When Gordy Johnston and I finally expanded our herping horizons as far south as Florida we found eastern kings common on Paynes Prairie (there have been only two kingsnakes found anywhere near Paynes Prairie in the last two decades! The reason for the decline is unknown.). The Paynes Prairie kings looked a bit different than the eastern kings from further north, but they were still very recognizable.

We left the eastern kingsnake phenotype behind as we traveled further southward on the Florida peninsula. Near Lake Okeechobee we found ourselves amidst hordes of the brown and cream kingsnakes then known as Florida kingsnakes. Today they are recognized as the Florida Peninsula intergrade kingsnake, L. g. getula x L. g. floridana, and are thought of by most as snakes of the sodfields and sugarcane.

Back then there were few sodfields, but sugarcane was taking hold and peanuts were a staple. The irrigation canals were being dug, leopard frogs were moving in, water snakes followed them, and indigos and kings trailed the waters. Of course, there were rodents in the fields, additional fodder for the snakes that dwelt in these habitats. But best of all, the main north-south road, US27, was edged on both sides by Australian pines, beneath which blown out tire innertubes lay helter-skelter and in these the kings sought refuge on cold days. Additionally, there were many outcroppings of jumbled oolitic limestone, grown over with recumbent blackberries and other vines, that were also replete with the kingsnakes. It was almost impossible not to find a fair number of them.

And today (2019), although the various chain kings seem harder to find in the wild, eastern, speckled, black, and intergrade kings with genes yet unsullied, continue to be readily available in herpetoculture. Certainly there are albinos and other morphs, but many with normal genes have not yet been overlooked. I guess that once a hobbyist favorite, always a hobbyist favorite. At least I hope so.