I had a bit of a surprise at lunchtime.

Some of you will be aware that our Cuitzeos are in a viv near my desk. I often glance past the laptop screen when I see movement, and I spotted something moving, looked up and saw a head looking towards me. Except the head was too small to be Vlad. By the time I got up it had disappeared.

It turns out that Lacrimosa has been gravid after all. I'd come to the conclusion that she wasn't because she wasn't put weight on so quickly and wasn't bulking up in the lower third. The evidence would suggest that I'd come to the wrong conclusion.

At 1:30 I found a baby Lake Cuitzeo Garter exploring the viv. Cute little guy (or gal) with the same chin and tail as it's parents.

Throw in a flurry of activity as we moved the baby into a RUB and Vlad into a bigger RUB.

"Baby C" had already freed the skin around it's head. And completed it's first shed in the RUB. I gave it a bit of a swim in a warm bowl (Steve suggested that) and since then it's been exploring or sleeping in the RUB. I guessed at that point that it was between 150-200mm from nose to tail tip.

Around 2:30 I found a jellybean.

I checked on Lacci through the afternoon and although she seemed restless (moving frequently from warm to cold hide), she seemed OK and nothing else to report until 6:30.

Between 5:30 and 6:30 she delivered a stillborn. It didn't make it out of the yolk sac. It could have been delivered anytime in the last hour while I was eating, and there was no movement, I opened the sac in case but there's no sign of life in this one. I won't know if it would have lived if I'd been there to get it out of it's yolk sac.
Being a man of science I used the stillborn as an opportunity to photograph a newborn Cuitzeo and get a more accurate length. It was 230mm long. Other than not being alive it looked like it had developed normally.

Lacci has been quite active while I've been typing climbing onto her shelf and the Thamock, and spent the last 5 minutes staring at me from the top of her rock. She doesn't look like she's got anything else in her, so I'm not expecting any more live or stillborn.
Cuitzeo babies certainly weren't in the plan for this year, but I guess Vlad and Lacci were ready afterall.

I know what you're going to ask. I'll add some photos shortly, I need to switch from work laptop to home desktop to get the photos off the camera.