Over ten years ago my husband and I were working in the yard and came across what looked to me like a mini-dragon—at the very least the biggest lizard I’d ever seen in my life. Like any other member of the wimp society, I was terrified.
When you’re long on emotion and short on facts, fear can inspire you to do foolish things. I went directly to my dragon-slaying hero (my husband) and asked him to kill it, because I didn’t want that thing living in my garden with the potential of frightening me every time I went outside to tend my flowers.
Now, not every husband would be up to such a thing. I mean this was no small creature (including the tail, about a foot long) and no small task. But my husband grew up on a farm, where death was a common occurrence. Let’s just say he was up to the job and performed it quickly, without any amateur attempts involved that would only have tortured the poor doomed thing.
It wasn’t until much later, when reason and curiosity seeped in about what the monster might have been, that I did some research. Who knew lizards that size were indigenous to the Chicago area? Not me. I learned it was very likely a salamander, a creation not only harmless to humans but helpful to gardens. What I should have done was set out a banquet for it, but instead I’d sent it to its maker.
And have felt horrible and guilty every time I recall that day.
In some small way I’ve made an attempt to redeem myself of this foolish deed. Yesterday we were checking our sump pumps and what do you think we found swimming around in there? A young salamander, thankfully in the ground water pump, not the wastewater one!
This time we acted from knowledge rather than fear, although I have to say this one was only a few inches long and therefore not as frightening. But neither we nor the salamander thought our sump pump an appropriate home. How he got in there in the dead of winter, we have no idea. He was obviously young, and small enough to have gotten caught up in our system from its winter habitat burrowed deep under the soil. (Something we’ll be asking a plumber about this week!)
Once again my hero husband was up to the task. We found a fish net and he scooped it up. Oh, it’s not a perfect rescue. We didn’t know this wasn’t a particularly aquatic lizard and preferred dry land to water, so we put him in a bucket with water on the bottom where he swam around a bit. Then I took him to the local pet store to see if we might find him a home.
Well, being part of corporate chain, they couldn’t take him. Silly me. However, they correctly identified him as a tiger salamander and said he liked crickets. They also told me he probably didn’t like that cold water, especially if he’d been in it a while.
So we replaced the cold water with warm and found a plastic cup for him to float in, then gave him a feast of a few crickets. By this time we were worried about him but when he chomped that first one we all cheered. Then we started calling other shops for one that might take him—over the protests of my 13 year old son who wanted him as a pet (not gonna’ happen once I learned they live fifteen years). We drove the little guy out to the only shop in a nearby county that would accept him and he now happily resides in a warm, moist habitat with one Kermit-green frog.
Now what in the world does this story have to do with writing, since this is a blog about writing? Absolutely nothing.
Confession is good for the soul.
Except for one last note: I find it interesting that God provided this opportunity for redemption. I mean, what are the chances that we would check the pump just when this little guy happened to have jumped in, with no way out? It’s all especially interesting when I consider that something similar happened in Springtime of the Spirit, my March 1st release—not with salamanders, but on a much more dramatic scale with men. An opportunity for redemption. Hmm…maybe God timed all of this for a blog posting, after all. I guess He’s a better marketer than I am. (He does have the bestselling Book of all time, you know.)
There. Now this posting has been tied to the writing theme.
I'm the official wildlife wrangler around here. I remember coming home to find the whole family waiting for me to get a grass snake out of the window well. I reached through the window and picked up the little beauty, then played with it for five minutes before releasing it back into my garden.
Incidentally our "wildlife in the house" quotient has dropped to zero since we put covers on our window wells. Which is good, because toads in the sump translates to lots of little toads in the basement (entertaining) and we have discovered by bitter experience that raccoons can get stuck and die in the wastepipe system – smelly, and the blowfly invasion the following spring wasn't pleasant.
Or I could move back to Europe where two thousand years of civilization has killed off most of the wildlife.
Oh, no! Don't move back to a place full of people like I was once, killing off wild life for no good reason.
Thanks for the tip about the covers; I assume they're plastic, because the mesh ones we have now don't keep much out of our window wells.
Oh and by the way, after that snake story you are officially banned for life from the wimp society. 🙂