A story with legs

The other day I decided to finally resow the grass under an old rubber mat we had been using on the lawn.  I've become accustomed to lifting the mat up when I mow so I was expecting there to be an assortment of the kinds of creepy crawlies that live under rocks and old rubber mats.  This time, though, the bounty was truly prodigious.  As well as the occasional beetle and earthworm, there were a few leeches and some enormous, fat worms.  As soon as they were exposed to daylight, most of these headed for the safety and darkness of their various underground lairs.  But two or three of the huge worms didn't really move - until one of them lifted itself up on its legs and scurried off.

Now I'm not much of a naturalist, but truth that I will cling to in a storm is that worms don't have legs.  For a moment I thought I'd uncovered some kind of unearthly hell-beasts.  Then I wondered if the chipmunks had started evolving to better suit the increasingly aquatic environment outside our back door.  But then I realised that these ten centimetre long creatures were salamanders, tiny amphibians, land-lubber cousins of the much more spectacular hell bender that lives in the waterways here.

There are a number of varieties found here according to my references.  Not something we have in New Zealand outside of high-school science labs, really.  I'm not sure exactly what species these are but from what I've read land-dwelling salamanders don't have lungs, instead absorbing oxygen through their skin.  That means they don't have to move to breathe, of course, which no doubt helped the initial illusion that they were worms.  Some of them also have that neat trick of dropping their tail when startled, to distract predators, though all tails seemed to stay attached this time.

I left them alone for a while and when I came back to sow the grass seed they'd obviously found their way to safety.  An interesting and exciting encounter, but one which reminds me I have to take more care when investigating nooks and crannies over here.  It was just some harmless salamanders this time, but there are nastier things that lurk in dark corners that I'd really rather avoid.