yesterday i came home and noticed that my female garter (that had been hiding and refusing food for the past month) was out and about, and there were a few yellow "balls" around the cage...some were in her hide box on the warm side, and a couple were outside just laying in the open. They looked like large yellow jelly beans. I put on some gloves, picked one up and it was somewhat squishy. Didn't smell too good either.
Looking at her, the last two inches before her vent were noticably bulging, so i knew there were at least a few more in there. I only watched her for about 30 minutes but at least 3 times i saw her breathing hard enough that i could actually see her body expand and contract with deep breaths. I didn't want to scare her or bother her, so after i checked out that one jelly belly, and cleaned up the area inside her hide box (she wasn't in there) and walked away for a few hours.
In total, she "had" about 8 of these strange squishy goo balls. She looked pretty skinny, but thankfully about an hour ago she ate two f/t fuzzy mice. She ate, so im not terribly worried about her, but i sure would like to know what happened. I'm thinking she was either really constipated (before today, she hadn't eaten in about a month) or she had a failed pregnancy. I'm not sure about the constipation thing, because that's a lot of hardcore poop! and im not sure about the failed pregnancy thing, because she just had a batch of babies in june of this year (four months ago).
I house her with a male, and she shed last week (6 days before pooping the jelly beans).
If anybody has had a similar experience or has any idea about what happened, i'd love to hear from ya. right now im kicking myself for not taking any pictures.
thanks in advance,
scute
