epyllion
Member
- Joined
- May 13, 2010
- Messages
- 31
- Reaction score
- 2
- Points
- 8
- Location
- Erie, PA
- Country
- United States
- Display Name
- epyllion
Alas, we thought she was immortal! She was given to a friend of ours in 1978 in California, and we made her acquaintance when we were grad students in central PA. When our friends moved to Hawaii in 2003, we adopted her, and she has lived with us ever since. We moved her into a larger (30-gallon) tank with lots of plants and she loved to eat--bloodworms and black worms, and live wriggling earthworms. She left a young male consort quite bereft (he'd been courting her with his wriggling tail the previous week), but we could tell she was slowing down. She was increasingly wobbly, and sometimes she had still spells--seemed to go comatose a while and then come back. We found her in her favorite plant with a sad cloud of skin around her--sign of organ failure. And we are very sad. She was the inspiration and model of our website logo for our Digital Humanities courses at Pitt-Greensburg, and she's the beautiful dark-skinned newt in the background of this picture:
http://newtfire.org/courses/firebellies.html
We have more pics of Lady Newt (as we called her), and will post. We're pretty sad about her passing because she was a companion for so long! The young male she's with is active and probably wants a companion. We're not sure how to go about finding him a new consort. Our newts, to our knowledge, never produced eggs--perhaps she was too old when we met her, or perhaps we could never quite get the tank water cool enough. But we have one younger Cynops Pyrrhoghaster and he'd probably be more fulfilled with a companion than being alone. He wants someone to court and flatter.
We have a good, stable tank setup and think we can provide a good home to a pair of newts or more, but we're grieving and aren't sure what's best to do--whether to donate our surviving newt to someone in this community, or seek adoption of a new female cynops pyrrhoghaster. We aren't biologists--just fortunate to have cohabited with a tenacious pair of newts for a long time. We thought of her as Methusaleh--and who knows how long she was alive before 1978? Farewell dear old newt, we miss you. :sad:
http://newtfire.org/courses/firebellies.html
We have more pics of Lady Newt (as we called her), and will post. We're pretty sad about her passing because she was a companion for so long! The young male she's with is active and probably wants a companion. We're not sure how to go about finding him a new consort. Our newts, to our knowledge, never produced eggs--perhaps she was too old when we met her, or perhaps we could never quite get the tank water cool enough. But we have one younger Cynops Pyrrhoghaster and he'd probably be more fulfilled with a companion than being alone. He wants someone to court and flatter.
We have a good, stable tank setup and think we can provide a good home to a pair of newts or more, but we're grieving and aren't sure what's best to do--whether to donate our surviving newt to someone in this community, or seek adoption of a new female cynops pyrrhoghaster. We aren't biologists--just fortunate to have cohabited with a tenacious pair of newts for a long time. We thought of her as Methusaleh--and who knows how long she was alive before 1978? Farewell dear old newt, we miss you. :sad:
