A Sudden Death - Bloated Corpse

[Tawu]

I found my amela stripe (born in Czech on 2008) curled up and dead this morning. Yesterday she seemed fine and ate with good appetite earlier this week.

Her weight was fine as well. We've had her since she was a baby and she's always been healthy, has eaten well, pooped well and shedded well. Only flaw she had was "curved" tail tip that she had since she was little but it only caused problems after sheds and we had to help her get rid of the skin on the tip of her tail but I really doubt it has been an issue this time. Thought I'd mention everything anyway.

I started smelling a minor "corpse smell" on friday. We had fed the snakes on tuesday so I went through all terrariums extra carefully (we have 5 corn snakes including the dead one, ball python and a yellow anaconda) in case someone has vomited or something's wrong. Checked all the snakes thoroughly, everything seemed fine, even sniffed through the terrariums to find the source but nothing ... xP

I didn't find the source of that corpse stench and I asked my hubby that I keep smelling it but he said he doesn't smell anything. Even made him check the terrariums too in case he finds something but nothing. My elder son didnt' smell it either but I guess I have oddly good sense of smell cause I smell other things clearly when my family has no idea what I'm talking about...
But anyways, yesterday I didn't smell that stench anymore so I started thinking that perhaps I've gotten crazy.

But again today, I smelled it and found the amela stripe dead. She was curled up like she was only calmly resting, only her head tilted to the side, mouth a bit open.
Weird thing is that her corpse was VERY bloated all-over starting from neck and it looked like around the middle of her body was black on the sides, rotten...
She was alive and seemed well early yesterday morning.. Anyone had similar experiences and what would you guess could've been the reason? Maybe I missed seeing some symptoms but she really seemed fine...

This was a very sad and unpleasant suprise, she looked fine yesterday morning, she looked completely normal...

Can't take pictures of the corpse since my hubby got rid of it and it hurt to even look at her bloated corpse but I still am interested to know what possibly could've happened so that I can do everything I can to prevent it from happening to any of my other snakes...

 

[Tawu]

Oh and I understand it'll be only guessing and I wont get an actual diagnosis from here but I have no clue myself so would like to hear what others think could be the most possible things that caused this...

 

[Twolunger]

At this point we can only guess at the cause of her death. My guess would be a bowel impaction, either a fecal matter impaction ( fecolith) or a substrate impaction. An impacted bowel can cause bloating, and the appearance of bruising on the sides of a snake. I would guess that the smell you were quick to identify was actually dead muscle or tissue. I don't understand why she kept eating though, typically you would have a regurgitation if their was an obstruction. The other thing is that you wouldn't have any fecal matter to clean up if she was impacted.