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Salamanders- A Roland McCray Story
Some wildlife should stay in the wild
“Whatcha doing, Roland?”
I looked up at as Johnny came around the corner into the back yard.
“Making a backyard pond,” I replied with a laugh then dropped mom’s little garden trowel. I’d been stabbing the ground with it but only getting shallow, triable-shaped notches in the dry, packed, clay soil.
“A pond?” Johnny said, incredulously.
“Well, not really a pond,” I said. “Just a hole couple of feet across and not very deep.” I shrugged. “I didn’t know the ground would be so hard, though.” I turned around and looked at the tool shed at the back of the yard. “I guess I’ll have to get one of dad’s big shovels.”
“Why are you digging it?”
“For salamanders. I’m going to catch them in the creek and being them up here to live.”
The salamanders in the creek were the neatest thing I’d seen down there. They looked like little, underwater lizards but swam, their smooth bodies wriggling when they pushed their tail back and forth in the water. They only used their feet to hold in place against the light current while they sat on the bottom, which is what they usually did.
I would see a few of them every time I went to the part of the creek not far from where…
