I'm honestly amazed I didn't get tetrodotoxin poisoning when I was a kid. We used to play with these rough skinned newts all the time, they were everywhere, and nobody was especially diligent about washing their hands.
Makes me wonder if a) these toxicity stories are exaggerated, b) it's really regionally specific, c) toxicity has radically increased in the past ~40 years since I was playing with newts, or d) we got dumb lucky.
I loved this article. I didn't know anything about the newt / snake interaction; I wonder if my dad did.