The past two years, I have gotten a surprise in one of my bullsnake clutches. They were both snows, and each time they revealed that one of my snakes was het for a trait without my knowledge (first was that an albino female was het for whitesided, second was that a whitesided male was het for albino).
This year I was incubating a clutch of ghost x ghost eggs. 2 were small - about 3/4 the size of the others in the clutch - and after a couple weeks neither of them showed any veining. I left them in there anyway, and rechecked them at the 1 month mark. Still no veining in those two eggs, but there was a "clump" with a reddish line in each of them...I left them alone. Fast forward another month...those two eggs are not looking so great. Both of them have a growth of dark mold, and candling doesn't reveal anything remotely promising. I waited til 70 days (my bulls usually hatch at pretty close to 72 days), and opted to cut them. In both eggs was what appeared to be dead, underdeveloped snakelings. Disappointed, I closed the box and left them. Peeked again the next day...at least they didn't smell bad yet. Day 72, I lift the box off the shelf and see a baby half out of one of the eggs. YES!!
I popped the top, and the first thing I noticed was that the baby was tiny.....and pinkish(?!?!). Second thing was that it was coming out of one of the eggs I had cut. Wow - it wasn't dead after all; but I was thinking it probably should have been...it was visbly breathing hard, and not much (if any) bigger than a baby cornsnake. It looked like it might be deformed, but when I touched it, it quickly withdrew back into the egg. The surprise, of course, was that it WAS pinkish...with pink eyes, too. A little blizzard coming out of my ghost eggs. When I checked later, I was surprised to see blue eyes peering out of the other egg I had cut...and that the blizzard was not only alive, but highly agitated by the ugly giant that was intruding in his world (that would be me
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That was yesterday. Today, both of them seem to be doing well (the blizzards eyes are smaller than normal...I'm guessing the parents are siblings - I didn't buy them breeder direct, but as subadults through a dealer - and maybe even their parents, too.) Luckily, I have other ghosts that will be ready next season, and other projects I can plug the parents into to do some outcrossing. I'll post pics of the little worms as soon as one of the other ghosts is all the way out of the egg (for size comparison)
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