You may recall that Pretzel, one of my corn snakes, laid 17 eggs back in May. If they were going to hatch, they would have hatched by now. But they haven’t: they all went bad, one by one, over the course of their incubation.

Fortunately, Pretzel is showing no signs of laying a second clutch, so at least she won’t be wasting all that energy and body mass again — at least not this year. I must remember to get her away from Trouser before the next mating season: I meant to this year, but Trouser took advantage of my procrastination. With two years of nothing but bad eggs, and poor fertility the year before, it’s clearly time to give this pairing a rest.