We used to hunt salamanders in my neighbor’s backyard after the summer showers. With dead leaves and mowed grass stuck to our legs, we trudged through the woods in search of flat rocks. We always flipped the first one together. Knelt around the stone, there was a silent assenting nod shared between us, then someone dug fingers into the mud and heaved it upwards. I was in fourth grade and the others were in second and third, so I often had the honor.
Once sunlight struck the tender mud, life flooded outwards. Worms, rolly pollies, centipedes, and slugs squirmed about. But we were after the salamanders. These were Eastern red-backs, endemic to Pennsylvania, with dark undersides and a rust-colored stripe spanning from their noses to the tips of their tails.
Scrambling to catch them, we grabbed them by their tails and cupped them between our hands. Their slimy bodies tried to escape between our fingers. We placed the salamanders into a cheap plastic box with a grated green lid and a little white handle. Once we had caught a few, we furnished their home with small stones, patches of moss, crushed leaves, and grass. We tossed some slugs in for good measure.
Salamanders are capable of self-amputation to escape from predators. We were, justifiably, perceived as predators. So, the salamanders often shed their tails in our hands or in the box. We watched their separated bodies and tails wriggle until the latter came to rest. The self-amputation was difficult for our young minds to understand: an act of desperation, but not emotional. The practicality of such a drastic measure, the destruction of a part to preserve the whole, was not translatable. We wondered whether our fingers would wriggle if we cut them off, though I knew they wouldn’t grow back like the salamander’s tail. A man my father worked with had cut his finger off. Now it was just a puckered stump.
While the tailless salamanders roamed around their enclosure, we observed intently. One of my friends took to drawing them. We left the salamanders in their containers outside overnight, with promises to return in the morning. But without fail, the harsh midmorning sun killed them. For a while, we convinced ourselves that the salamanders didn’t suffer, but with each container dumped into the mass grave behind the shed, our resolve faded. I cannot forget the odor of their shriveled corpses.
By the end of summer, my friend amassed a stack of salamander illustrations. We looked at the drawings and could not deny that we had disturbed a natural order. After our vow to never hunt for salamanders again, we returned the ones we had captured that day from the container and put them back in the mud beneath an overturned stone. But when we replaced the rock, we heard a crunch.
