Salamanders Still Rock!

While growing up in Connecticut's quasi-woodlands, I was fascinated with salamanders. They're little amphibians -- see photo at right, think a cute snake with legs -- that liked to hide under rocks and stones. They were absolutely abundant, if you knew where to look.

With my neighborhood friends, we'd go searching for them and put them in a cut-off soda bottless (complete with lid on top and tiny breathing holes), keeping them in my garage and sometimes in the house, if I could get away with that. I still remember when they escaped that one time...

Anyway, yes, I/we were geeks.

I was reminded of all this Easter weekend, when the task put before me was to move about 200 logs and then stack them. I found about a dozen of them, or at least one 12 times. This time, though, there was no homebuilding for the 'manders. But it did bring me back to some great memories of my childhood.

Fun Fact: Those devoted to studying the biology of amphibians and reptiles are called 'herpetologists'. I still get a chuckle over that and pretty much the only reason I posted this-- the above is all filler just for me to laugh some more.