Well, so I hatched another nice clutch of extremes this year, and all of them have been out of their eggs for a couple days now except for one. I slit this last egg a couple days after the others were out and a few last one's were pipping with their heads out. This last one still hadn't come out today either and there was still a TON of thick yolk mass there so I knew this one probably died a good while back and never fully developed.

Well, today I still didn't see anything so I went ahead and gently dug it out from the center of the thick yolk mass to see what the deal was......

To my EXTREME shock and dissapointment, this snake was fully-formed with NO deformities and moving around, it was just very small. The other thing that absolutely blew me away is that it looked to be an incredible looking extreme ghost!!,.....probably the best looking one ever seen to date!

And yes, I totally understand about the colors being the last thing to develop within the egg before they hatch too. Now if it was simply a case of the tangerine color being washed out and not developed yet in it's inner triad rings, they should be the exact same coloration as what would normally be the red (in this case tangerine) body rings (RBR), but they AREN'T!.....they are pure snow white just as an extreme ghost, normal ghost, or anery would also display. You can even just make out the extremely thin vanished pinner rings bordering the wide inner white rings on this one. There is no way that the virtually unicolored alternating tangerine rings should be this insanely different and pure WHITE......

Anyway, if I only left it alone, I bet it would have hatched out just fine and would have been the most extreme ghost ever seen to date, but who would have known it would be so far behind in it's development than the other eggs??.......it's just bizarre!! I have never had a hatchling so far behind the rest in developing or hatching. Another crazy thing is that this line of extremes don't have anything to do with the anerythristic gene either, because after of four big clutches the past four years I would have known by now.

I think the poor thing has already died since I pulled it out a few hours ago........*sigh*....pretty disappointing..

You can tell by comparing the colors to the other nice extremes in the second photo that it seemed to be a very outstanding extreme ghost......arrrgh!!!


~Doug




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"a snake in the grass is a GOOD thing"

serpentinespecialties.webs.com

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