Wee beasties

This post relates to one I read from Peewiglet recently. With respect to keeping your inner tent door well and truly secured even when you’re not inside. This sounds like common sense and of course we all do it, but sometimes its easy to forget and we need a reminder.

I found this little critter trying to get into my tent when I was camped beside Derwent Water last weekend. I had kept my door zipped closed while we chatted and drank by the water’s edge and he was waiting patiently for me upon my return.

I have no idea what he is other than some sort of amphibian. He is of course completely harmless, but even so I wouldn’t have been best pleased to have him sharing my tent, and crawling across my face in the middle of the night in search of the warm wet hole that was producing all that lovely hot air.

It took me ages to get a good shot of him too, as I was a bit tiddly when I returned to the tent. A pint of Old Peculier (normally enough on it’s own to set me rocking) and half a litre of self-mixed vodka and coke (lethal strength!) do very little for camera, head torch and hand co-ordination. The result was 5 blurred pictures and this one.

He was moved gently off the door and deposited in the damp grass nearby, before I checked for other creepy-crawlies and turned in.

5 thoughts on “Wee beasties”

  1. I can’t help but smile when I hear the word newt – I read all the PG Wodehouse books when I was younger and of course Gussy Fink-Nottle is an avid newt fancier, which inevitably leads to much merriment.

    I don’t think I’ve ever seen a newt before, at least not in the wild – I feel kind of privileged now 🙂

  2. I think it must be an eft, i.e. a wee newt tadpole transforming into a newt.

    *kisses it*

    Wow, I love newts! I used to spend *hours* sitting by natural ponds in the sand dunes when I was a very tiny piglet, hoping to find one. The ratio seemed to be about 1,000 frogs/toads (in fact, the rare Natterjack toads, although I didn’t know it at the time) to 1 newt. I consider them precious.

  3. Ooh, what a wee darling!

    *cuddles the tiny amphibian*

    Now, I wouldn’t have been at all unhappy to find a little beastie like that in my tent, except that I’d be concerned that I might have squashed him. Is it a baby newt? Or something more exotic, perhaps. Istr that there’s another newt-like amphibian over here, and I suspect that this might be one. I’ll go and check the books.

    Kudos on the quality of the photo despite being semi-pickled at the time, btw *g*

    *goes off to look the beastie up*

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