"_______y ______erson"
(Fill in the blanks in the title with any word-- used twice, Mad Libs style-- to create your very own pet name or insulting label.)
So you may have noticed that I am an international superstar--that is, very popular with the Canadians. As it turns out, one of my Canadian IFFs (imaginary internet friends) uses phrases like "creepy creeperson," and this is coincidental, because I happen to have owned a fire belly newt in college named Newty Newterson. And so there was all this commenting going on between the various IFFs regarding my use of a similar phrase, because I am just that corny. I thought that after all that, I owed it to my audience to share the story of my newt, however painful it may be.
Life and Death of Newty Newterson
In college, we weren't supposed to have pets. Not even fish. But because you know I am such a rebel, I not only owned a fish (which died very quickly), but I graduated onto more challenging water-loving animals: fire belly newts.
I bought two. One never made it past the first night. I woke up the morning after I bought them, only to find him between a rock and a hard place... the hard place being the wall of the tank. I don't know that I ever even named him, because you know, pets need to find their names, and 8 hours of sleep isn't really enough time for such a quest. But the other newt did find his name within a reasonable period of time, and that name, as it happens, was Newty Newterson.
Newty Newterson was not the more active of the two brothers (despite the fact that his sibling was dead). He rarely went into the water, and preferred to sit pensively upon a rock and ignore the dried bloodworms I placed in his tank. Thinking that maybe he didn't like the food (after all, astronaut ice cream is a fun novelty, but I'd much prefer a pint of Ben & Jerry's), I went to the pet store where my friend worked and she showed me the gourmet newt food- bloodworms, which were frozen into what looked like little tiny red ice cubey clots. Only the best for my Newty.
So I put the food in the freezer door at my apartment, inside a plastic shopping bag with the words "Newty's food! Do not eat!" written in black permanent marker. It kind of made the freezer smell, but the thing needed to eat, didn't he?
Except he didn't eat. I would faithfully deposit a single cube on his rock a few times a week, which he never seemed to touch. Sometimes I would take really careful notice of where he was and how much food was there when I went to sleep, just in case there was some sort of weird Toy Story thing going on where he pretended to be stuffed during the day and came alive at night. But I frequently woke up to find the same amount of food and Newty in the same position.
He just kept getting skinnier and skinnier. He looked dried out too. Sometimes I'd dip my finger in his tank water and wet him. He kept living, though. So I thought, maybe he's just anorexic. Maybe he's eating just enough to keep living, but can't get past his poor body image. Hey, we've all been there in some way or another.
So months later, summer came, and I was invited to work my vacation at the very petstore where I adopted Newty and his brother. By this time, I had decided that Newty was going to go sometime soon, and I didn't want to see it. I was going to give him back to the petstore and let him live out the rest of his days in the newt tank at the store. Maybe he was just lonely, and the companionship of 100 other newts would revive him.
The day came to bring Newty in. I lovingly put him into a tall plastic cup (you know, the huge red ones you drink out of at picnics?) with a tiny bit of water at the bottom, and drove to work with him in my cup holder. I went into the store, told my manager Matt (my best friend's loser boyfriend) my plan, and he said he'd take care of it. I gingerly placed Newty's cup on the counter and went about my cashiering duties.
About 30 minutes later, I went over to the cup to check on Newty. Except he wasn't there. I thought Matt had taken him and left the cup there, and I was kind of disappointed that he didn't tell me when he was doing it. But I thought, I'll just go visit him later and see how he's doing.
And then another 30 minutes went by, and Matt came around behind the counter, stopped in his tracks, and said,
"Hey Jess, what's your newt doing on the floor?"
I gasped when I saw it: Newty, flattened, with my sneaker print in dust upon his back. I killed Newty! But how did he get out of the cup?! The thing didn't move once during all the months I had him! How had he managed to scale the wall of the cup, scale down the wall of the cup, down the counter, and toward the door? How did he know that was the way out?
And of course I burst into tears, while Matt laughed at me, saying comforting things like, "God Jess, it's not like it was your dog. It's a f-ing newt." And then he called his girlfriend, who then called me to express her condolences in the form of a ghostlike chant of "Jeeeessssiiiiccccaaaa... it's meeeee... Neeewwwwwwwtyyyyyy... I can't pass to the other side until you clean the rest of me off your shooooooeeeeeeeee..."
It took a while for me to get over the incident. I mean, animals have committed suicide in my care before... beta fish jumping out of bowls, goldfish letting themselves be sucked into filters... but never something of this magnitude. Newty was unhappy with me, tried to escape, and I just smashed all his dreams. No pun intended.
And what did my wonderful friends do to make me feel better? They gave me an albino water frog for Hanukkah. But that's a whole other story.
Fire belly newt, but not Newty.
So you may have noticed that I am an international superstar--that is, very popular with the Canadians. As it turns out, one of my Canadian IFFs (imaginary internet friends) uses phrases like "creepy creeperson," and this is coincidental, because I happen to have owned a fire belly newt in college named Newty Newterson. And so there was all this commenting going on between the various IFFs regarding my use of a similar phrase, because I am just that corny. I thought that after all that, I owed it to my audience to share the story of my newt, however painful it may be.
Life and Death of Newty Newterson
In college, we weren't supposed to have pets. Not even fish. But because you know I am such a rebel, I not only owned a fish (which died very quickly), but I graduated onto more challenging water-loving animals: fire belly newts.
I bought two. One never made it past the first night. I woke up the morning after I bought them, only to find him between a rock and a hard place... the hard place being the wall of the tank. I don't know that I ever even named him, because you know, pets need to find their names, and 8 hours of sleep isn't really enough time for such a quest. But the other newt did find his name within a reasonable period of time, and that name, as it happens, was Newty Newterson.
Newty Newterson was not the more active of the two brothers (despite the fact that his sibling was dead). He rarely went into the water, and preferred to sit pensively upon a rock and ignore the dried bloodworms I placed in his tank. Thinking that maybe he didn't like the food (after all, astronaut ice cream is a fun novelty, but I'd much prefer a pint of Ben & Jerry's), I went to the pet store where my friend worked and she showed me the gourmet newt food- bloodworms, which were frozen into what looked like little tiny red ice cubey clots. Only the best for my Newty.
So I put the food in the freezer door at my apartment, inside a plastic shopping bag with the words "Newty's food! Do not eat!" written in black permanent marker. It kind of made the freezer smell, but the thing needed to eat, didn't he?
Except he didn't eat. I would faithfully deposit a single cube on his rock a few times a week, which he never seemed to touch. Sometimes I would take really careful notice of where he was and how much food was there when I went to sleep, just in case there was some sort of weird Toy Story thing going on where he pretended to be stuffed during the day and came alive at night. But I frequently woke up to find the same amount of food and Newty in the same position.
He just kept getting skinnier and skinnier. He looked dried out too. Sometimes I'd dip my finger in his tank water and wet him. He kept living, though. So I thought, maybe he's just anorexic. Maybe he's eating just enough to keep living, but can't get past his poor body image. Hey, we've all been there in some way or another.
So months later, summer came, and I was invited to work my vacation at the very petstore where I adopted Newty and his brother. By this time, I had decided that Newty was going to go sometime soon, and I didn't want to see it. I was going to give him back to the petstore and let him live out the rest of his days in the newt tank at the store. Maybe he was just lonely, and the companionship of 100 other newts would revive him.
The day came to bring Newty in. I lovingly put him into a tall plastic cup (you know, the huge red ones you drink out of at picnics?) with a tiny bit of water at the bottom, and drove to work with him in my cup holder. I went into the store, told my manager Matt (my best friend's loser boyfriend) my plan, and he said he'd take care of it. I gingerly placed Newty's cup on the counter and went about my cashiering duties.
About 30 minutes later, I went over to the cup to check on Newty. Except he wasn't there. I thought Matt had taken him and left the cup there, and I was kind of disappointed that he didn't tell me when he was doing it. But I thought, I'll just go visit him later and see how he's doing.
And then another 30 minutes went by, and Matt came around behind the counter, stopped in his tracks, and said,
"Hey Jess, what's your newt doing on the floor?"
I gasped when I saw it: Newty, flattened, with my sneaker print in dust upon his back. I killed Newty! But how did he get out of the cup?! The thing didn't move once during all the months I had him! How had he managed to scale the wall of the cup, scale down the wall of the cup, down the counter, and toward the door? How did he know that was the way out?
And of course I burst into tears, while Matt laughed at me, saying comforting things like, "God Jess, it's not like it was your dog. It's a f-ing newt." And then he called his girlfriend, who then called me to express her condolences in the form of a ghostlike chant of "Jeeeessssiiiiccccaaaa... it's meeeee... Neeewwwwwwwtyyyyyy... I can't pass to the other side until you clean the rest of me off your shooooooeeeeeeeee..."
It took a while for me to get over the incident. I mean, animals have committed suicide in my care before... beta fish jumping out of bowls, goldfish letting themselves be sucked into filters... but never something of this magnitude. Newty was unhappy with me, tried to escape, and I just smashed all his dreams. No pun intended.
And what did my wonderful friends do to make me feel better? They gave me an albino water frog for Hanukkah. But that's a whole other story.
Fire belly newt, but not Newty.
posted by Jess at 3:24 PM
3 Comments:
It's always horrible when a beloved pet chooses to take their own life, especially after struggling with anorexia for so long.
My son had goldfish that kept dying and I had to keep replacing them before he noticed. 'Hey, mom, Goldie grew!' ...
Poor Newty... :o( ~M
Jessica, i don't think it was you. I suspect fowl play. Somebody probably snuck behind the counter with shoes like yours and set poor Newty up. I think you should call in Warrick to investigate!
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