Another Eventful Day on the Bike

While on a bike ride out to the end of Bollinger Canyon Road yesterday, I just about ran over what I thought was some sort of lizard on the road. Christopher had a pet alligator lizard that died just last week. His name was Will and Christopher was awfully sad to see him go. So of course I thought I should grab this thing and take it home with me. I downed as much as I could of my remaining sports drink filled water bottle and scooped him up.

I was about 7 miles into a 25 mile ride. This little guy chilled at the bottom of my watter bottle soaking in the remaining drops of my sports drink for another 18 miles. When I got home I tried to surprise Christopher by telling him that there was something wrong with my water bottle and that I couldn't get any more sports drink out of it, etc, etc. He opened it up and started staring at the underside of the cap. He then headed for the sink to rinse out the water bottle, which is where I stepped in.

I used this index of California Salamanders to figure out that this little guy is a Sierra Newt.


We cleaned out the old lizards cage (10 gallon aquarium) and headed to the pet store for the supplies for a semi-aquatic aquarium.

I have to admit, when I was a kid I always wanted a newt. A buddy of mine had one (Walt Todd I think) and I thought it was the coolest thing.

Our little guy's name is Theo. The kids woke up this morning and watched him swimming around under water, and thought it was incredibly cool that he had slept in his little rock house we bought from the pet store.

Hopefully we can keep this one alive!