Darby glad to hear things are going ok with "Rusty". You deserve a medal!

Well this isn't exactly a 'pet', but....

Last year I found a tiny painted turtle on the road (only about 1"!), and I kept him for fun for 2 weeks and fed him worms. He ate a ton and then I let him go again in a pond with many of his own kind.

Well, this week I was in our cold basement and found this spotted salamander just sitting in the middle of the concrete floor:



Well our neighborhood is nothing but houses and backyards and roads, so I figured he wasn't going to thrive in our dry concrete basement. I put him in a plastic bin and he's been eating worms up and soaking up water in the dish there with leaves and earth.
In the next couple of days I'm hiking into the woods of the nature preserve area near our house and a mile in there is a big pond in the woods so I'll leave him near there under some loose leaves. That will be a good spot for him, since they lay their eggs in ponds and it's protected woodland- just right. It's also only a mile from our house so his basic territory won't be too vastly different.

He's so pretty, my 'temporary pet'!