Posted on 04/05/2009 3:56:15 PM PDT by NormsRevenge
NEW HAVEN, Vt. – The black salamander with yellow spots sat on the roadside in the dark, ready to make a go of it.
But it was not on its own. It got help from an escort — one of 45 people who volunteered on a recent night to carry salamanders, frogs and newts across the road during their annual migration to mate.
...
From rural Vermont to urban centers like Philadelphia, human escorts, called bucket brigades in some places, help amphibians make it to their mating areas without getting squashed by cars. It's part education, part conservation, and part science.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
I recall a study in Science News where snake and turtle models were put on a roadway. It was determined that 1-in-10 cars swerved to run over a turtle, but 8-in-10 swerved to run over a snake.
Darwin never did the calculus on that one!
What about washing them across the roads with a gentle stream from a hose? They are amphibians after all and a little water certainly wouldn’t bother them - it would beat chasing them down and picking them up.
OMG! I am from the town next door. I just called my Dad and he said he hasn’t heard anything about this. lol He is laughing pretty hard.
I suspect a hose could wash off their coating of slime, which protects them from infections and from drying out, and a hose powerful enough to move them (they tend to hug the ground) would cause injuries. Also, the amphibians are moving across the land adjacent to the roads. Dragging a hose around could kill a lot of them. Furthermore, some of the crossing zones run for hundreds of thousands of feet of roadway, making hoses impractical. The creatures are pretty easy to spot with with a strong flashlight. They’re sluggish and easy to catch (except for some of the frogs). However, generally they only need to be caught and picked up only when cars are approaching.
Yes, and even though they are limp and slimy, any one of them has more courage and will to survive than all the Republicans in the Senate put together. I tried to keep a few newts as pets once, and they are surprisingly feisty. They would rear up out of the water and grab pieces of hard-boiled egg dangling over them.
sorry to be “mister know-it-all” but I’m a long time collector of herps and being able to discuss with others is always a treat
Only that Maryland doesn’t give a flying frog’s arse about them.
Ever since I was a kid, I’d go up on the mountain at their “official crossing area” after a spring rain and do my own “bucket brigade”, though sometimes I just used a large trash bag.
I hauled so many salamanders, toads and myriad frogs species back home that we were deafened by the croaking, peeping and chirping all summer.
I stopped doing it in my late 30s after a scary incident.
[When I was young, *anybody* could be out alone at any time without fear...but flatlanders and liberals moved in and things “changed”]
One late February evening, we had come after the annual “Winter Bash” at the local biker bar and they were *everywhere* on the road, a lot of them already smashed but many more slowly making their way down the mountain to the vernal pools below.
Within five minutes, I had dropped hubby off and raced back with a flash light and bucket.
About 20 minutes into my “rescue”, some man I did not know slowly approached in his vehicle and just sat and stared at me for an unnervingly long time.
There I was, suddenly realizing that I was on a deserted mountain top with no other traffic, wearing spike heels and a mini skirt, in the pouring rain with only a flash light and a bucket of amphibians to defend myself and considering that perhaps my world had changed for the worse while I was not looking.
[It was one of those “epiphany of your own mortality” moments]
In an odd and somehow menacing voice, he asked what I was doing [which was painfully obvious considering that I had a flashlight and bucket in one hand and several salamanders in the other] and if I there was anyone with me, helping me.
All I could think to do was act utterly insane so I pretty much shrieked in the craziest voice I could manage “I’M HUNTING SALAMANDERS!!!!”
Just then, approaching headlights from the other side of the mountain illuminated the heavy fog and he sped off.
I’m fairly hard to spook but *something* about him felt very, *very* “wrong”.
*If* he’d have decided to grab me off the road, no one would have ever known what became of me.
So, I then started calling the DNR and the roads department, -begging- for some kind of signs for the breeding season, only to met with indifference or outright derision.
Not surprisingly, the Eastern Spotted Salamander, once so common as to be unremarkable, is now rarely seen.
When I do find newly morphed ones, I take them far up onto our mountain and put them near a shallow pond that contains no fish.
After many years of doing this, we have our own little isolated colony up there.
As far as the mountain goes, I avoid it and take I-70 instead of RT 40 until breeding season is over.
It sickens me to see *so* many of them carelessly smashed by cars...as though they “darted out” and the killing was unavoidable.
For all that the cities of Maryland are liberal hell holes and God help you against the EPA goons if you accidentally drop old tree branches into “natural water ways”, even if they be only mountain runoff, they sure don’t care about endangered species”, with the single exception of the accursed chicken hawks.
I even offered to make and post my own signs to help the critters but *no*, that’s illegal.
Sorry for the rant.
Their hypocrisy drives me mad.
I guess so.
Spotted Salamanders are NOT garden varmints.
They belong to the “mole salamander” family and spend 99.9% of their time underground and out of sight.
They eat slugs, larvae and other slimy fauna that damage crops and trees.
Their tunneling aerates the soil, much as earthworms do.
They [and others like them] are vital to the natural order of things.
In fact, -no- salamander is considered pest; quite to the contrary.
Got slugs and other nasty bugs eating up your garden?
Encourage salamanders to move in by providing them with mulch, dead leaves and logs.
They have a voracious appetite for pests.
May the Great Djinn bless you!.....8:)
It will most likely drown them or physically damage their soft, frail bodies.
These are not water salamanders and they are not built to be above ground nor are they “sturdy”.
Only their in their newly hatched gill [”eft”] phase and briefly during adult phase mating do they *ever* stay in the water.
As one man, can you -stop- the baby slaughter?
Of course not.
As one man, can you show mercy to and -help- one of God’s creatures?
Of course you could.
They have ancestral crossing places that predate human occupation of this continent.
Unfortunately, they did not anticipate the advent of highways and cars.
As a Christian, -mercy- should extend to -all- innocent and helpless things.
Rather than rage against what one cannot change, one should try and change what one can.
I had a huge Spotted female who would literally snap and bark when it was “supper time”.
[she was kinda scary]....LOL
They should have been extinct a long time ago, smash them!
and mostly idiots
I just rescued a Redback from an untenable situation this evening.
It had gone down into our root cellar [*very* old log house] and there is utterly nothing down there for it to eat.
I moved it up to the leaf-laden dirt dugout that goes down to the cellar where lots of tasty bugs live.
[and obviously, they rank very highly on my list, too]...:)
Heartbreaking, really.
I grew up feeling totally safe everywhere around here and to find out that it was no longer so was a rude and rather depressing awakening.
I knew someone who raised a bunch of baby terrapins in an aquarium. They acted surprisingly intelligent and alert, gathering and rearing up out of the water when the caretaker presented them with food. (Yes, I know they’re not amphibians, but they are cold-blooded and people don’t expect interesting behavior from reptiles either.)
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