Scale deformation

[Shiari]

Lovely. My bloodred, Jared, has an appointment to see the Vet up at a clinic that has a couple people who have specialised in reptiles.

His reason for going is that the scales caudal and inferior to one of his eyes are... puffed out. Like there's a swelling *underneath* them. So, understandably I'm not terribly thrilled about this. My secondary concern (after, a slightly panicky "is he gonna be okayyyyy???) is if this is something benign.... what are the odds of it being genetic? I bought Jared from Kathy Love, but she in turn got him from another breeder. I'm probably going to email her tomorrow and ask for the original breeder's contact info so I can ask if any of Jared's siblings showed a similar deformation. I really wanted to breed him and decades down the line play around with the granite morph and try and strengthen up some red saddles with clean silver sides (sort of a grayer and cleaner version of the miami, which I am pondering throwing some genetics in) but if this is something that can be passed on to offspring, he's naturally going to be immediately relegated to simply "pet" which would make me terribly sad.

So, anyone seen anything similar in any of their little guys? I first noticed a touch of oddity a couple weeks ago, but he's been in his blue so I wasn't quite sure, but when I last nabbed him to feed, it looked more apparent.