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As a child, I never played in ditches or along the sides of ponds. There were always too many mosquitoes and things that felt icky. Yesterday, look what came creeping into my small garden. How fascinating and strange to see a salamander so far from its natural habitat. Afterall, the closest body of water near my home is the sea and that would be too salty for this little creature to survive in; the deciduous woodlands are too far up the street for it to have crawled all the way to visit me. I have a feeling it was probably picked up by a bird and dropped on my patio once it realized the salamander excretes a toxic poison that keeps predators from eating it. Despite my best efforts, I was only able to take a few good snapshots before picking him up and taking him across the street to my neighbor’s yard which is much bigger. Perhaps he’ll have a better chance of survival in her garden.
