By KAREN MADORIN
During a fishing trip on La Sal Mountain when I was 8, I caught my first mud puppy. Apparently, someone fished this pond using these oddly named amphibians as bait and lost enough that survivors reproduced. We found several that day. At 8, I considered them miniature dinosaurs and tucked that memory into my childhood Awesome Event folder. After that experience, I saw these only in bait shops.
My next sort-of-mud puppy experience occurred in 1993 when Big Creek threatened to burst its banks. Like many folks living in the flood plain, stacks of empty sand bags and giant piles of wet sand filled our driveway. While we stuffed seemingly endless containers, our daughter screamed bloody murder while pointing at an equally frightened tiger salamander with tail in the air to make itself look bigger. We calmed sis with the explanation that this was Kansas’ state amphibian, and we’d disturbed its home. Her dad shared stories of finding them when he was a kid. During that conversation he mentioned salamanders begin life as mud puppies with funny looking gills. Ah, memory retrieval time for mom.
As we tied stuffed sand bags designed to protect ours and the neighbors’ house from rising water, I envisioned 8-year-old snaggle-toothed me playing with goofy-looking amphibians on that Utah mountain. How interesting to learn the dark brown and yellow spotted critter with a tail that initiated our child’s screams was once a mud puppy.
Over years, we’ve spied more salamanders, but they’re shy. I’ve seen more in museum collections than in the wild. That is until recently.
My husband walks our little terrier morning and evening to work out her extra energy and help her digestive system function at peak performance. She came home one morning prancing and dancing more than usual. Clearly, they’d had an adventure.
Sure enough, she discovered treasure--a salamander outside our shed door. By the time I investigated her find, it had vanished. However, I noticed a little burrow in soft flower bed soil, which I attributed to a wolf spider winter den.
A couple weeks following this incident, the pooch and gramps returned from a dusk sojourn with treasure in hand. Gramps had picked up a salamander smaller than the previous visitor to show gramma. He also thought to snag a clothes pin for a photo reference.
We set the little guy next to the clothes pin in a small bowl and told it to pose. It definitely understood, letting me snap photos to send grandkids.
Once we released it, I googled salamanders to learn that this time of year local species migrate into spring breeding territories (Seems early, right?). Considering we don’t have a pond or creek in our yard, the water source where it will lay eggs next spring is nearby. Despite lack of an on-site water hole, we do have loose soil filled with roly polies and worms suitable for winter room and board. I guessed wrong about wolf spider holes--a salamander claims that winter home.
I’m guessing when I see morning sun reflecting off that pond to the east, it will be full of frolicking mud puppies. How many salamander spots will we count next fall?
Karen Madorin is a retired teacher, writer, photographer, outdoors lover, and sixth-generation Kansan.