You know anything bout this?
[written by the largest amphibian on FR]
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.