“Facebook is supposed to be for nice things, not bodily function stories or personal sexual accounts or even politics,” my friend said after reading this story. “This story is disgusting even if it is about a cute, colorful little animal.”
“What’s disgusting about it? Defecation is a normal bodily function, and salamanders are certainly far from disgusting. They’re fascinating and beautiful and I’m an inquisitive biologist,” I said. “Furthermore, shit tolerance is in my genes. My father made a name for himself analyzing it for colon cancer detection.”
“Yeah, but you make it sound like you are focused on the salamander when in fact your focus is on the habitat,” my friend added. “I know you and you get a kick out of things that others find repugnant. For example, that story about your grandmother getting hit in the face by doodoo that you mother had emptied out the front car window of a rapidly moving car. Your unfortunate grandma was sitting in the back seat with the window open. Or when you were a teenager and would entice your small sisters into a closet and then fart through the cracked door and laugh at their screaming. Those are just a few examples.”
As I see it, the most tragic thing about climate change is losing all the species we have already lost and will lose over the ensuing decades. As a species ourselves, we humans seem to have a penchant for wanting to roast or drown. That’s our sick prerogative, but to take down every other species in the biosphere with us, or ecocide, just because we are greedy and ignorant or just plain stupid, is not our right.
We were headed to our cabin in the Sawtooth Mts several weeks ago, when we made a pit stop at U.S. Forest Service outhouse. When I lifted the lid to do my business, what I saw below shocked and fascinated me. Resting comfortably on a mound of TP alongside some nasty stuff, was this salamander, the protagonist of the story. Always, always, before doing a big job or even a small one, I look below. Ever so briefly.
Seemore the Salamander. I gave it the name, Seemore, for two reasons: one, I liked the old joke from the suite of jokes about funny book titles and authors, about the book, “Beneath the Bleachers” by C. Moore Butts; and two, his vantage point of actually seeing more butts than any other salamander, probably in the world. Had it been thrown in and trapped? Swam or crawled in? Fell in while using the outhouse? Gotten hungry for something different? Regardless how it got in there, I wasn’t going to relieve myself until I’d relocated Seemore.
Based on a single observation, which is lousy science, the Long-toed salamander (Ambystoma macrodactylum) is acclimating (adaptation requires genetic changes) to change, most likely; acclimation is a behavioral or physiological change only) pretty rapidly. There are hundreds of gorgeous salamanders and frogs that are either extinct or going extinct because they can’t acclimate rapidly enough, but Seemore is having none of that. He has seen the handwriting on the wall, and shifted its habitat from rotting wet longs and other wet areas where sunlight is limited, to a less appealing sunless habitat. Sunlight doesn’t get past fat asses.
Is this another example of urban adaptation like we have seen in the U.S. for so many species: coyotes, foxes, mountain lions, elk, deer, raccoons, sharks, humpback whales and squid to mention a few. I threw in the last three because sea levels are rising at alarming rates. But for now, alligators, rattlesnakes, and black widow spiders are the only ones we can faint for if we see them. I once saw a red fox sitting outside the door of an all-night Jackson’s in McCall, Idaho. I thought it was a cardboard cutout until the cashier threw a hotdog to it.
A number of years ago, my wife and daughter were inj eastern Australia camping, when my wife went into an outhouse, lifted the seat, and starting to position herself for execution, when she discovered a huge toad or frog down in the toilet. I think it was a flush toilet which would suggest that particular amphibian had lost his crackers or had super glue on his pads. Regardless, she screamed. This frog-toad probably just liked the rush of water over its body thinking it was showering.
Is Seemore’s genetic makeup changing that rapidly that natural selection can favor butt-viewing and shit-eating, over insects under a wet, dark log? I doubt it. This was likely a fluke. However, after gingerly removing Seymour from the hole with several rubber glove and Covid mask layers on, I carried him to the small wetland a few feet behind the outhouse and left to complete my big job. When I returned, Seemore had crawled back to the outhouse and was slowly trying to burrow under it.