A fairly large number of snake species native to North America display well-defined longitudinal stripes that are not mixed together with other primary markings such as blotches, saddles, or the like. If one of these is a spinal stripe (thus excluding Baird’s rat snake and all the whip snakes, which are striped, but not on their spines), and that stripe is narrow (thus excluding the mountain patch-nosed snake, which has a broad spinal stripe) and brightly colored (thus excluding the Texas patch-nosed snake, which has a narrow spinal stripe that does not contrast brightly with the snake’s background color) in comparison to the background coloration of the snake–as in this specimen–the field of possibilities narrows considerably. [...]