My Recent Discovery

We were doing yard work in the rain last weekend, clearing out fencerows by the horse corral, primarily.  But then that branched off to other jobs you notice and next thing I know, I was digging up dandelions in the yard by our fence that runs down the hill south from the house.  I noticed something muy unusual as I turned over a spadeful of ground.  Hmm, it was black and slimy and at first glance I thought it was a snake, but then definitely not, it had legs and toes!  Interesting, I thought, and I turned the ground back over and went on with my business. 

As I kept working but now onto another part of the yard, I couldn’t drop the thought that maybe that thing was something more than interesting.  I told Gary when he finished what he was doing to meet me at the front yard, I had something to show him. 

As I took him to the spot where the thing was, we found that it had halfway embedded itself back into the dirt.  I probably would have just left him alone and went on, but Gary pulled him out of the dirt and said we should let the kids look at it.  He didn’t really know what it was.  Neither of us had seen one of these before.     

The kids came out.  

You would think from the look on Sis’s face it was something really scary but it wasn’t.  A bit creepy maybe, but it was just this little harmless creature. 

(Gary’s man hand for perspective)

I think I kinda grazed its back with the spade, but thankfully, it hadn’t broken through the skin.  We were amazed at the strength in that tail once he/she got to moving around a little. 

“Well, I’d say it was either ambystoma jeffersonianum or maybe it’s an ambystoma platineum.  Sorry, Mom and Dad, I guess I’m a little rusty on my western central Illinois salamanders.”

Really, all we recognized was that it was a salamander.  Gary took it off to the far part of the yard that had standing water since it was losing its shiny sliminess as we had it in the open air for a few minutes. 

I just looked on the Illinois Natural History Survey - U of I site to possibly identify it and see none that look like this noted to be found in our county. 

Hmm, I may need to tell them about this one.  Maybe it’ll turn out to be an ambystoma dianegillum.