1st WITCH. Round about the cauldron go; In the poison'd entrails throw.—
ALL. Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn, and cauldron bubble.
2nd WITCH.Those witches in MacBeth knew how to cook up a poison stew.
Eye of newt, and toe of frog,
Wool of bat, and tongue of dog,
Adder's fork, and blind-worm's sting,
Lizard's leg, and owlet's wing,—
For a charm of powerful trouble,
Like a hell-broth boil and bubble.
Today I'm thinking about poison after the demise (I believe) of my pet red-spotted newt, a creature whose skin is toxic enough to kill college students drunk enough or challenged enough by peers to eat them and die.
Now, as long as you don't plan to eat your red-spotted newts, keeping them is perfectly safe, though washing hands well after handling them is an obviously wise move. They actually do well in captivity, living up to 20 years, according to a former amphibian zookeeper whose site I'll cite here soon. (Misplaced modifier alert! No, the zookeeper isn't an amphibian; he cares for amphibians in a zoo, ha.)
Of course, you must carefully care (no redundancy there) for these little creatures, and they do require specific care, such as calcium in their diets, to live very long. I asked said expert whether I could keep them in a terrarium filled with the soil and moss from my back yard, the place where I'd found my pets, periodically replenishing that soil with new from the yard so the tiny organisms the newts feed on would be restored.
The expert told me I could easily keep them ten years with this system, especially if I augment their diet with freshly caught tasties such as (small) earthworms dusted with calcium powder and rolly-pollies aka potato bugs. The latter's tiny armadillo-like exoskeletons contain lots of calcium. The humus-rich soil and leaf litter from my yard contains the newt's favorite delicacy, the snow flea, so Fred and Ethel would get many fresh batches of their comfort food.
Eft is the juvenile, terrestrial stage of the newt. A bright orange jewel on damp brown leaf litter after a rain is how you'll most likely find one of these creatures that are so prevalent in Appalachia.
In the case of one of my adorable missing eft, HE was not poisonous. I was.
