RIP Newtie

Newt picture from Chipping Sparrows and a Newt website

Our newt has died. 

Or so we assume.

Jim came home from a conference last weekend and noticed that Newtie was not in his little habitat. Jim couldn’t get Newtie to surface even for a fresh worm. Then he noticed that there were a lot of fresh worms in Newtie’s habitat, all of them untouched, roaming free and unafraid. Jim was disturbed and saddened. Newtie was dead.

But after the sadness--or perhaps in tandem with it--came the obsession. Jim was obsessed with finding Newtie’s body. He had to see the remains, to understand why Newtie had died. Hadn’t he carefully cultivated fruit flies for him when Newtie was young? Hadn’t he fed Newtie enough worms? Hadn’t he carefully monitored Newtie’s habitat to make sure it was wet enough, mossy enough, shady enough, sunny enough? Hadn't he loved Newtie enough? 

I can say that Jim definitely did all of those things—much to my chagrin at times. Do you have any idea how unpleasant it is to smell rotting fruit as fruit flies are cultivated in a newt cage only 3 feet from the dinner table? Or how lovely it is to watch your husband and children feed the newt a nice little worm several times a week? Or dig up the lawn to find said nice little worm? Ugh.

To really understand this story, though, you have to know Newtie’s history.

Jim caught Newtie while out on a hike with the boys in Vermont. All three of them were thrilled with their discovery and determined to take the adorable baby newt home.

A hardened Northerner, I’d caught many newts in my youth and learned how difficult it was to keep a newt in captivity. Newts are master escape artists. They can get out of almost any contraption designed to keep them in. My optimism that we could keep this newt in captivity for more than a few hours was not high.

My grandfather, also a hardened Northerner, had the same perspective. “Better find yourselves a good cage if you think you’re taking him home,” was all Grandpa Harland would say when Emerson excitedly showed off his little red newt.

“I’m going to call him Newtie!” was Emerson’s enthusiastic reply.

Grandpa Harland and I exchanged a dark look. Never good to name something that can so easily be lost…or worse.

Despite our advice, the boys built Newtie a home out of an old pot, some moss, water, leaves, and bark. Over the top they laid a mosquito net.

“He’s going to get out,” I told them. “He’ll climb up the side of the pot, down the netting and escape.”

They all laughed at me—who did I think this newt was, Houdini? Har, har, har, Emily! You’re hilarious!

The next morning, Newtie was gone. Emerson was distraught. Jim was dumbfounded: how could the newt have escaped? How could he, a philosophy professor with a PhD, have been outsmarted by a creature with such a tiny brain?

They searched the entire cabin, which isn’t hard because the whole place is smaller than our bedroom at home. After ten minutes Newtie was discovered stuck to a sticky board under the heater (which was off, thankfully).

Jim and Emerson huddled over poor Newtie, assessing the situation. In hushed whispers they discussed the likelihood that Newtie would survive his predicament and hatched a plan for removing him from the sticky board.

“He’s not going to survive,” I told them, matter-of-factly.

“Maybe not, but we have to try!” Jim said reprovingly. Clearly I was a heartless, heartless being.

After running the sticky board under the hottest water Newtie could handle, they finally managed to get him free. This time Jim made him a home in a mason jar with a screw top lid that had tiny air holes poked in it. Newt proof! And he warned Emerson to leave Newtie alone, not to move the jar for a little while as Newtie was likely very traumatized and might not pull through.

But pull through he did. Newtie even made the 16 hour drive home to Pittsburgh where we went out and bought him a nice little plastic habitat with a very secure lid.

That was four years ago. Five years of watching the Newt while we ate breakfast, lunch and dinner. Witnessing his change from land dweller to aquatic creature. Lovingly showing him off to the neighbor kids and feeding him hand-picked worms….

Newts don’t live long. I was amazed we were able to keep him alive for a week, much less years. Every day he lived was a gift, in my opinion. So when Jim discovered that Newtie was gone, I wasn’t surprised. Emerson was sad, of course, and we talked about it, about Newtie’s probable death. Jim’s obsession with finding Newtie’s body yielded nothing: even taking everything out of the cage, piece by piece, and sifting through the dirt and mud like a prospector, he found no remains.

“I want to find his little skeleton! I want to know what happened to him!” Jim said in distraught tones. (Side note: do newts even have skeletons?)

Out of Jim’s hearing I told Emerson the greatest gift Newtie gave us, other than five happy years of his presence, was his second escape, his escape to the Great Newt Beyond. That we will never see Newtie’s decomposed body means we can conjecture for the rest of our lives about what happened to him: did he escape and somehow find his way into the crawlspace under the house and then on to freedom? Did he rot in the basement? Did one of the overlarge worms in his cage eat him? (That was Harland’s suggestion.) We will never know! He is now part of the Carmine Family History, a mysterious part of it, too. How exciting! What a gift!

Jim isn’t too fond of this view. He is still gripped with the relentless desire to SEE Newtie’s dead body. To know what he, as caretaker, did wrong. Perhaps he has forgotten that things die when it is time, despite our best efforts to keep them alive. This is the way of Nature and it's natural.

Rest In Peace, Newtie. Thanks for the great, quiet years. And thanks for that one last great escape. 

Chickens

Stripe, the Easter Egger, and an Australorp

We were driving home from Vermont last summer when Jim said, "We should get some chickens."
My response? "ARE YOU CRAZY? As if I don't have enough to do cleaning up after you and the children and shopping and working and planning our lives, you want to add CHICKENS to my long list of things to take care of? No way! Or...wait...I have a better answer: We can get chickens AFTER you build a coop. How's that for a compromise?"

I knew he would never build a coop. Jim just isn't into getting out of the chair in front of the computer for anything other than 1.) emergencies and 2.) picking berries in the backyard.

Here's the problem, though: the chicken idea took root in my brain. The tiniest kernel of chicken thoughts burrowed into my brain and, very quietly, unbeknownst to me, began to grow. About five months ago, I started to think, "Maybe we should get chickens." And then, a month later, I started researching chickens in a haphazard, I-have-nothing-to-do-at-work way. Then, a month after that, I was OBSESSED with chickens. I could not stop thinking about getting chickens, what kind of chickens to get, how to raise them, where to put them, what kind of coop to buy or build, where to put the coop, how to protect the chickens from predators....

At first I tried to hide my chicken thoughts from Jim because I was sure he would say, "AHA! I knew you would come around to the chicken idea!" Eventually, though, I couldn't help myself: I was bringing home coop designs and buying chicken care books. He was bound to find out.

So I told him. His response surprised me: "You really want to get chickens? I thought we decided we weren't doing that." And, not understanding the depth of my obsession, he assumed the chickens were a distant possibility maybe 6 months to a year from now.

Four weeks ago our chicks came in the mail.

A person can buy day-old chicks on the internet and have them shipped to herself--did you know this? Neither did I, but when I discovered it, I was thrilled! I set up my brooding pens, got all the necessary baby chick supplies and waited for the post office to call me up to say the peeping package had arrived. 


I ordered six chicks: two White Leghorns, two Austrolorps and two Easter Eggers. Only days old when they arrived, they were adorable! Three little yellow chicks (White Leghorn), one brown striped chick (Easter Egger) and two black/white/yellow chicks (Australorps). Ordering on the internet, I was assured the chicks were hens, but concerned that I seemed to have gotten three of one kind and only one of another kind. (More on that later...maybe)


The children, of course, adore the chicks. Sometimes I lie and say I got the chickens for the children. Don't believe it. Education smeducation: my kids do their learning at school. And chickens are chickens: they go from cute to ugly to lovely and then they lay eggs. There's really no good excuse for wanting them unless you are a farmer. 


But then, because I was obsessed with chickens and had done a ton of research, I discovered there is a Chicken Swap at the feed store near us every first Sunday of the month--and the first Sunday was coming right up! That very weekend, after church, I piled everyone in the car and drove on out to the feed store. Just to look. For the children. For education.

"You're going to buy more chickens, aren't you?" Jim asked in an accusatory tone.

"No, of course not! I just want to look!" I told him, indignant.

And I really wasn't going to buy anymore chickens. But then we found this lady selling Golden Buff Orpingtons, the kind of chicken Jim professed to want, so I felt we just had to buy two Golden Buff chicks. You know, for Jim. So he could feel like he had representation in the flock.
"What are you going to name your chicks?" I asked Jim as I handed him the box with the two Buffs peeping inside.
"Lunch and Dinner," he replied. I don't think Jim is totally sold on the chicken thing yet...

So we now have eight chicks in the bathtub at home. People ask me, "Where?" And I say, "In the bathtub." And then they ask, "Outside?" which I find a strange question. Sure, up in Vermont people have bathtubs in their backyards, but not in urban Pennsylvania--at least not that I've seen. Of course the chickens are in my house! But they don't just live in the bathtub--I set up their brooding pens inside the bathtub and Jim rigged up their brooder light so it hangs suspended overhead. When the chickens started flying last week, Jim brought in some chicken wire and rolled it over the top of their pens. Chickens in the bathtub is one thing. Chickens all through the house is another.

At four weeks, though, something strange starts to happen to these previously adorable little chicks that were no end of cute: they turn into pullets.

Pullets are not cute. Pullets are the adolescent phase of chickens and, much like the adolescent phase of humans, pullets are not pretty. They are awkward and flighty (literally) and messy and stinky. Their feathers are just coming in, so fluff is falling off and some places look bald while other places look full and lovely and still other places are covered with what look like feather-tipped plastic needles. No one tells you about pullets. People either talk in terms of chickens or chicks. No one mentions the ugly middle stage.

Pullets have not dampened my chicken love, however. In fact, last Sunday I dragged the entire family on Pittsburgh's 2nd Annual Chicks in the Hood Tour. If you have not done this--and have even the slightest interest in urban farming--I highly recommend it! We visited 4 coops on the East End of Pittsburgh and I found no limit to the number of things to oooooh and awwwww over. Lovely. Gorgeous coops, gorgeous chickens, friendly owners--what more could one ask for? (A Chicks in the Hood shirt in my size would have been nice, but I happily took one of the only XL's left....)

Do we have a coop? You may be wondering this.

The answer is no. I reneged on my own conditions. Mostly because, after so much research I realized that the chicks would be in their brooding pen(s) for 4-6 weeks before moving into a coop and I naively thought it would be possible to build a coop in 4-6 weeks.

I do have the plans for the coop and most of the raw materials. Last week Jim and I framed in the walls of the coop. But, just as with the chickens, I do not want any ordinary coop, especially not a coop a person can buy online or in a store. I want a specially designed coop, just for my chickens, one that is fully predator proof. Because I don't want to have pullets in my bathroom again any time soon.