The desert kingsnake's diet consists of rodents, lizards, and smaller snakes, including rattlesnakes.

[2] The snake's glossy dorsum is black or very dark brown colored, finely speckled with off-white or yellow.

These pale flecks form dimly defined narrow vertebral crossbands, between which the intervening rectangular areas are black.

The abdomens of both adult and young snakes are mostly black, with white or pale yellow blotches marking the outer ends of the ventral plates.

Brightly yellow-speckled in vertebral cross-lines, they also exhibit a lateral row of large, dark brown spots, which as they mature, are gradually fragmented by encroaching yellow flecks.