When Toby and I went on a walk out to the soybean field this morning, Toby spotted a new creature—a red eft newt (an adolescent red spotted newt). It was gorgeous—a bright, stunning orange with spots. It stood frozen for a solid 10 minutes as we examined it and talked about it and I took photos of it. Eventually, the newt put himself into motion… verrryyyy slow motion. He slow-moed his way to the underbrush lining the path and we waved goodbye.

 

Toby and I continued on our walk, discussing how lucky we were to have seen a new creature. Then he piped up with, “I’ve eaten newts, before, Mom.”

“Um, Toby, where on earth have you ever eaten a newt? I’ve certainly never served you one before,” I replied.

“Oh, we had them all the time at Pooh Corner [his pre-school],”

I paused. I mean, Pooh Corner didn’t serve the healthiest of menus for lunch (Toby has eaten a corn-dog there), but I couldn’t quite wrap my brain around the cook, Tina, serving up some small lizards to the toddlers.

“What are you talking about, Toby? I don’t think you ate newts at Pooh Corner,” I said.

“Yes we did!” he replied. “They were really good. They were wrapped up in a kind of bread. A rectangle of bread wrapped around them. We had them for snack.”

My instant mental picture was of a newt prepared pig-in-a-blanket style, pastry wrapped around its torso with tiny legs peeking out of the edges of the pasty. I was even more baffled.

“Do you mean pigs in a blanket? Like little hot dogs wrapped up in bread?” I asked.

“NO, THEY WERE NEWTS, not hot dogs” he replied, clearly annoyed with me. “But they were kind of black.”

So now my visual is of a charred newt nestled in pastry and served to my child. This was becoming a bit surreal. I was a bit speechless, trying to figure out what sort of normal, non-reptilian food my son could somehow be mistaking for a newt.

Toby expanded his description a bit. “They’re kind of fruity. They taste really good.”

My lightbulb went off. “Toby, did you mean Fig Newtons????”

“YES, Mom,” he said, both exasperated with me and a bit triumphant that I was finally on the same page as he was. “Newts!!!! Fig Newts. They’re so good”

I cannot tell you how relieved I was to discover my son was referring to an iconic cookie rather than to a pastry-wrapped reptile. Then I was almost weak-kneed with laughter. He was a bit puzzled about my amusement. After all, he hadn’t had visions of charred baby lizard wrapped in crescent roll.

This afternoon we made our monthly sojourn to the Mecca of Wegman’s to stock the shelves, and I made sure to pick up some Newts. We each had one for ‘zert tonight after dinner.