There's apparently a poisonous newt in Sri Lanka. It's gray, rather large for a newt and it waddles.. a rather quick waddle, but not quickly enough that anyone that wasn't half asleep couldn't escape from it. Its spit is poisonous, but it doesn't have much in the way of teeth, so it attacks by scratching and then licking the scratch.... if the newt remembers to do both, you're in trouble. Fortunately, no one remembers it ever doing both.
And that's why, Nadesh says, Sri Lankans use the phrase "attention span of a newt."
I don't know if this is true and I'm not planning to google "poisonous newt sri lanka" to find out. I've seen the newt - waddling across my tent floor. He neither scratched nor licked me. He was probably not a newt - just a salamander, and I have no idea of the status of teeth and nails of the Caudata order.
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