Insect eggs or bizarre type of mold or fertilizer?

Question

I found a pile of several hundred, perhaps several thousand, 1-3 millimeter in diameter yellow spheres in my backyard. They look like they could be eggs, but the shear volume of the pile seems to preclude any one creature having generated them. They are half opaque yellow and half clear. They squish when stepped on but the outer shell is not soft - it is firm like a ripe berry.

Some have popped open leaving nothing but an opaque yellow shell. They could be some sort of fertilizer granule? But I have no idea how they would have gotten there if they are. I took a large number - easily several hundred into my house in a jar for observation and as far as I can tell none of these spheres has done anything yet over the past several hours.

Any help would be great! Thank you!

Answer 1

Is there any chance that someone could have dumped a pile of fertilizer? A picture would help, but this sounds exactly like a type of slow-release fertilizer called Osmocote. The relatively firm shell encloses a fertilizer that degrades when exposed to sunlight, so the inside may appear to be empty. Good luck waiting for them to hatch!

Answer 2

Sounds like someone (you?) spilled a container of Osmocote fertilizer. Do you ever use that? Other than that, I would guess some kind of insect or frog or toad eggs??

Answer 3

I doubt it's any kind of egg--worms lay them underground, and amphibians usually lay them in water or attached to something, often embedded in a gelatinous mass. You can usually see a black dot in eggs. But just in case here's a link to worm egg photos.

Answer 4

Or slug / snail eggs.