Rotting object in compost, what is it?

BananaRepublic · 21 April 2020 at 11:24AM

I was emptying out large plant pots today with a view to planting carrots. One large 12” pot was full of compost, I started scooping it out when I felt a large rubbery object, roughly egg shaped and maybe 4” long, covered in soil, but with part exposed to show a pinkish fleshy moist region. I then noticed a stench of rotting meat, overpowering. It turned my stomach so I emptied everything out onto the garden.

My question is what was it? The compost originally looked undisturbed. At first I thought it was fungal, a hypogeous (underground) fungus, but I don’t think so. There are fungi that grow from buried ‘eggs’ such as the stinkhorn, and perhaps one could rot before achieving tumescence. I did think about a buried dead animal, maybe a fox meal, such as a rat but the compost looked undisturbed. Foxes are said to leave a meal and come back later, and we have foxes and badgers visiting.

Yes I could retrieve it and check, but as I say it turned my stomach. Maybe I’m becoming squeamish with age. Hopefully someone has come across something similar. I asked this in another sub-forum not realising there was a gardening sub-forum. Someone suggested a dead toad. Could be, they can get this big. No I don’t have a photo, as I said, it turned my stomach and I don’t want to catch some bacterial infection from messing around with it.