A few hours later I had a look to see how the eggs were doing. The hatching time for day gecko eggs is about 50 days, depending on temperature, so I wasn’t expecting any action, I was just so proud of finding them. Imagine my shock when I saw that one egg was missing! I did hope that meant it had hatched, but I couldn’t see the baby anywhere, but there are many places in the terrarium where it could have hidden, if it wanted some privacy.

The next morning, the remaining egg was broken! It seemed to be lacking a bit of its shell. Now I became very suspicious and watched the terrarium from some distance. Sure enough, when she thought the cost was clear, Worf, the Mummy, appeared next to the egg. She ran away when I approached, but a bit more of the shell was missing. This continued for the rest of the day, until there was no shell, only a dead gecko embryo lying where the eggs were placed. It looked quite advanced too, with a big head and eyes, although I don’t really know what the stages of lizard embryology are.