They have become increasingly popular companions for people interested in the exotic pet trade, due to their extreme color variations and relatively docile behavior.

A single Cape gopher snake can exhibit wild color and pattern variations along the length of its body.

As the patterns ae traced down toward the tip of the tail, they begin to change in shape and darken until they are completely black, while the yellow background loses its intensity.

Other Cape gopher snakes' patterns begin as black stripes before evenly transforming into the familiar marks of the P. vertebralis species.

Dominating the landscape is a Sonoran-like desert fraught with cacti, but includes dry tropical forests, arid tropical scrubs, desert shores, and the Sierra de la Laguna, an area designated by UNESCO as a global biosphere reserve because the "semiarid to temperate subhumid climate area represents highly important and contrasted ecosystems."

This area is known to go months, even years, without rainfall, yet can be saturated with the flood waters of a tropical storm or hurricane in a span of just one week.