BullyMom
New member
Hi, My name is Maureen Lee. I am a preschool teacher. I run a childcare business out of my home. Our class pet is named Bully. He is a rough-skinned newt and he is about 13 years old. I got him from a teacher who inherited him and two more tartricha granulosas from someone who was foolish enough to fish these wild creatures out of the Puyallup River in Washington State in the USA. Neither of these people knew what these animals were or how to take care of them. When I saw the tank full of black water in the classroom that I was about to take over, I asked what was in it.. The teacher said, I don't know, some kind of salamanders. I said, "The water is black, how do you know anything is living in there?" He replied, "We put a frozen food cube up on that rock every couple of days and it disappears." The children wanted to know what was living in the disgusting water too, so I proposed a research project. We fished one of the newts out of the tank, took a picture, and used books and the internet to identify the animals and find out how to take care of them. Next we cleaned out the tank. Two of the newts were alive. One had been crushed under a tock and only an arm was left. We held a funeral and flushed the arm down the toilet. The two rough skinned newts that survived their disgusting ordeal we named Bully, because he was big, and Whimpy, because he was smaller. Whimpy lived to be 10 and Bully is still with us. I have questions about his senior care especially because he broke a leg recently, but I will ask them in the help forum. I love this site. I have visited many times as a guest when I needed information about taking care of my newts. Thanks!
