If looking for salamanders has taught me anything, it’s that it’s hard. I often joke that my hobby consists of me looking for things that don’t wish to be found. Just think about it, how often do you see a bird or a mammal while on a stroll? How often do you see a salamander? That’s because despite being some of the most abundant animals in the woods, the majority of them spend most of their lives underground. I sometimes feel like the only way I find what I’m looking for is because I stumble across the dumbest individuals that are most likely to get eaten. Who doesn’t love a challenge though?
However, every-so-often when the stars align, they emerge from their hides to party. They gorge themselves on bugs on the forest floor and migrate in mass to wetlands for annual orgies. Now it may sound weird but it’s nights like these in the driving rain and cool night air that I feel most alive. It was nights like these that back in high school my long-time friend Ananth and I hoped to find our first ever Eastern Tiger Salamanders (Ambystoma tigrinum). They’re impressive salamanders, boldly patterned and largest terrestrial salamander native to our home state of Kentucky. They lived in prairies prior to European colonization. Today they live in farmland and the closest populations were just shy of an hour’s drive from my house. So, with advice from researchers and a newly acquired driver’s license we would head out every rainy night in the hopes of finding our target.
A beautiful example of an adult male Eastern Tiger Salamander (Ambystoma tigrinum) from the coastal plain.
Now I’ve always thought the job of a meteorologist is an easy one. While I don’t have much experience training to be one, I can’t think of many other professions where you are wrong daily and keep your job. This always seemed to be the case for our tiger salamander spot. A simple farm road that ran between several cattle ponds, where these salamanders bred. Many-a-night was spent debating with Ananth whether it was worth it to make the drive out only to do just that and arrive at a dry road.
It wasn’t always a loss though. Ananth and I despite ever growing frustrated enjoyed our time together. After all, these were some of the first forays away from home we made without parental supervision. We would jam to Mumford & Sons and do a rain dance or two in a gas station parking lot. Then one night in late February radar showed a front too large to dissipate heading directly at our road. With hopes higher than ever we jumped in Ananth’s car and sped westward into the deluge.
Arriving at the road just in time for the rain to fall, the usual nerves of whether or not the trip was worth it died away as the wipers came on. One pass down the lazy country road and amphibian activity was hopping--for lack of a better word--with frogs on the move. Between two cattle ponds in an area that look particularly good Ananth spotted something. We got out to look and our hearts broke, a flattened tiger. A casualty of the little vehicular traffic at this time of night. This is sadly a fate that befalls too many. Amphibians are some of the most vulnerable to road mortality, being small and slow. Roads and the cars that drive them can drive populations to extinction, killing sexually mature animals as they migrate to their ancestral breeding area.
With the road so close to breeding habitat it's easy to see how so many salamanders meet a quick end (image shamelessly ripped from google).
Disheartened but not deterred we continued our evening, arriving at the end of the stretch turning around and driving back. While it may have hurt, the road kill salamander proved that they were active. Within minutes Ananth called out again, only this time as we stopped the car and ran back, in the view of our flashlights was a young Eastern Tiger Salamander crawling on the edge of the road. We had done it! Shouts of joy rang out across the pastureland and homesteads. Weeks of patience for the right conditions had paid off. In our hands was an animal that spent the majority of its life unseen and we felt so lucky to see it.
We went on to see another larger salamander that night and many more since. My 91st salamander species taught me that success often takes patience for the right time and perseverance through failure. It wouldn’t be the last to do so either. Like I said, looking for salamanders is hard but that’s the rub. The difficulties are what make it so much fun. Those many nights of dry conditions only made the victory all the sweeter and the memories made of singing “I Will Wait” all the stronger.
Comments