“It’s the stuff dreams are made of” -Sam Spade My first awareness of the San Francisco Garter Snake came in the early seventies, when I came across a first edition of Stebbins’ western field guide.  Like many herpers, I’ve been thinking about that snake ever since my first glimpse.  To my midwestern teenage self, San Francisco was as far away as the moon, and who names a snake after a city, anyway?  The Maltese Falcon was set in Frisco, and I’ve always loved the ‘stuff’ quote uttered by Spade at the film’s conclusion.  The gaudy garter from the same burg was my dream, and many times I wondered if I would ever get to see one. In the mid-1990s I…