My last post grossed some people out. Sorry. I would never eat a salamander. Aside from not wanting to hurt the little creatures, the Taricha species is very poisonous. Apparently it's the same type of toxin that's found in the Japanese pufferfish used to make the delicacy fugu, except it's water soluble. It would kill you if you ate one these cute little dudes. That adds another dimension to the story in "Lamb" that Mariam mentioned. I used to play with them when I was a kid. There are fourteen species of salamanders native to the Pacific Northwest, but the one we found most often was the Newt (Taricha granulosa.) We called them firebellies because of their bright orange underbelly. I think we also called them mudpuppies. Those were probably the brown ones.
Maybe tomorrow I'll get back on track with my normal topics.
2 comments:
now if that isn't the cutest little salamander ever! we had firebelly toads as pets but they required live crickets and that was a pain to always have to go buy them.
Very educational post :) You said back to your normal topics...normal, you? HA (that's a compliment for anyone who reads this and thinks its not)
Yeah, it's a great photo. I just snagged it off a Google image search.
Normal. What a strange concept. Sounds a bit boring to me. But sometimes I wish could take a vacation in normal for a while.
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