It finally happened!

Early morning update since yesterday’s nap turned into a full blown sleepytime. :sweat_smile:

We have both good, bad, and interesting to share. We’ll start with the good!

All 10 remaining eggs look like they’re doing alright, including Kimball’s clutch despite an unfortunate fall of the egg box. They still show good veins and have yet to go bad 19 days away from their due date. One of them is notably more deflated/less taut than the others, but it has been like that for some time even before the drop and is still showing good veins, so we’re trucking along with incubation. Ororo’s 5 potatoes are also doing great and are now sitting around the halfway mark!

The bad; you may have noticed I said 10 remaining eggs, when we last had 11. The suspect one in Ororo’s clutch unfortunately did go bad, producing an unpleasant odor and going wet/moldy. Based on the stench alone I could tell the egg was no longer viable and decided to pull it.

The interesting; I did decide out of curiosity to do a dissection of the egg. The yolk and whites of the egg had begun to solidify, and I was able to find the embryo before it’d begun to decay. It was maybe about 3" long and looked like a little pink worm more than anything, though had a definable head and a very developed eye. If I can figure out how to upload pictures under a filter, I’ll post them for those curious to see what a 2-3 week ball python embryo looks like! I won’t post them as-is though, as the pictures are a bit gnarly seeing that the stomach cavity never made it around to closing up, so the beginnings of the embryo’s organs are visible.

Hopefully the remaining eggs all make it and everyone pops out healthy. These next three weeks are going to be torture!

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