Success with salamanders

This entry documents the final chapter of my experiences with Jefferson Salamanders. For previous entries, begin here.

“How many times do I have to tell you? Stop putting everything you find in your mouth!”

You’d think they’d have the sense to know food from non-food, but my little salamanders seem to explore their world by mouthing it.
Not a problem, as long as you can spit out what you don’t like.
A serious problem, if you can’t.

Last week, I peeked in the tank one morning to find two of the crew had something stuck, as in “hopelessly lodged,” in their mouths. One, in such a way that it prevented him from opening his mouth at all; the other--one preventing him from closing it. A sticky matter, indeed!


The seeds of the Nodding Bur-Marigold float at the surface, their back-curved barbs like fishhooks in tender skin. Apparently mistaken for food, they’d been gulped—and would go neither up nor down.


In a small bowl of water on the kitchen table, I operated on my 2-inch long patients—with a pair of tweezers and the utmost concentration. Barely restraining them until I could get a grip on the bur, then working it gently loose. Minutes later, they were swimming once again in the tank.
And, of course, hungry for breakfast.
A small mark, the only reminder of the nasty, spiny encounter.




This weekend, on a cool rainy evening, I released them back to Wood pool--the few Jefferson Salamander larvae, still with bright, smiling faces. (and several Wood Frog tadpoles)



At 45 days since hatching, they’re soon to metamorphose—lose gills, crawl out onto land, and begin their adult lives, underground. They’ll return to this very same pool for only a few days each spring to breed, reuniting with others of their kind in the icy March waters, before leaving eggs behind.
I wanted to be sure they came to know this pool as their home. And completed the cycle of life in these waters. This is their ancestral pool.



How far they’ll wander from here is unknown.
And how they navigate the distance for their return each spring is also unknown.
But one thing is certain—on a rainy night in late February, under a pitch-black sky--with my flashlight, I’ll be watching.
Waiting to welcome them home.

Research conducted in Indiana in 1970,
calculated the rate of survival for this species in the wild,
from hatching to metamorphosis to be 0.7% (less than one percent).



Thanks to Mrs. Nesbit for hosting ABC Wednesday!