...to unceremoniously celebrate the life of Newt. Newt was not one single newt, nor one single entity. The entity we call Newt was in fact a symphonic conglomerate of microbial beings, embodying, slipping through and mingling with the amphibious worlding of Newt. Newt was not an individual, each Newt cell outnumbered by resident microbes in uncessant symbiosis. The same is true of you. We muddle with Newt in our multitudes.

The odds of Newt surviving to adulthood were negligible. Of the 223 eggs so meticulously folded into individual leaves by his mother, half were dead before they began due to a peculiar genetic mutation.

Of the 111 eggs that began to kick, miraculously thrusting tiny bodies into the murky bowels of Pond, only 4% survived the giddy metamorphosis of gills to heaving lungs, crawling sometime in late July from the dregs of their watery nursery. The rest ceased to be Newt, metamorphosing instead in the dark stomachs of stickleback fish, Heron, diving beetles and the occasional Kingfisher. There they would deliquesce, absorbed into sinew or excreted back into the mud and pond from whence they came. Some were eaten by Newt herself, swallowed into her ever-ravenous belly in a gastronomical expression of sisterly love.

So dear Newt, whose genetic germination stems from the Eocene, 40 million years ago, is, or was, a miracle. Unless, that is, you follow the prevailing winds of (un)reason, in which case Newt is of very little worth or consequence. He and she are not conducive to exponential growth, follow no rules, cannot be monopolised for economic gain, and have an uncanny habit of turning up on proposed development sites and ruining business prospects. In this light, dear Newt is, or was, useless, hopeless and an abject failure.