Night of the spotted salamanders. (Clippings).In Vermont, they call it "Big Night." Usually it comes just before income tax day, on the first rainy night when the temperature stays well above 40 degrees. That's when the spotted salamanders of northern New England New England, name applied to the region comprising six states of the NE United States—Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut. The region is thought to have been so named by Capt. put on their annual nocturnal show. By the thousands, these 8-inch-long black and yellow amphibians amphibians members of the animal class Amphibia. Includes frogs, toads, newts, salamanders and cecilians all capable of living on land or in water. emerge from their wintering-over places and crawl along ancient forest paths to the vernal pools that are their ancestral spawning grounds. It's a dark, wet, slimy mass migration. And a dangerous one. As the salamanders cross roads, many are flattened by night traffic. Others become sick or die from exposure to oil and salt on the pavement, easily absorbed through their moist skin. Which is why each spring, Patti Smith of the Bonnyvale Environmental Education Center in Brattleboro, Vermont Brattleboro is a town in Windham County, Vermont, United States. The population was 12,005 at the 2000 census. Brattleboro was chartered on December 26, 1753, and is located in the southeast corner of Vermont. , organizes crews of volunteer salamander crossing Salamander Crossing was a bluegrass band based in New England that disbanded in 1999. The band was composed of lead singer and fiddler Rani Arbo, Jeff Kelliher on guitar, mandolin, and vocals, and Andrew Kinsey on bass and vocals. guards. Like Minutemen minutemen, in the American Revolution, colonial militiamen or armed citizens who agreed to turn out for service at a minute's notice. The term minutemen equipped with flashlights instead of flintlocks, Smith's volunteers must be ready for action at short notice. At the first sign of a warm, rainy night, they wait by the phones for their marching orders to known crossing sites. Their job: As soon as any salamander salamander, an amphibian of the order Urodela, or Caudata. Salamanders have tails and small, weak limbs; superficially they resemble the unrelated lizards (which are reptiles), but they are easily distinguished by their lack of scales and claws, and by their moist, crawls onto the road, they pick it up and gingerly gin·ger·ly adv. With great care or delicacy; cautiously. adj. Cautious; careful. [Possibly alteration of obsolete French gensor, delicate carry it to the other side. No hand lotion please; salamanders' skin drinks that right up. Each year, as many as 15 teams cover different locations in southern Vermont. At the more heavily traveled crossings, teams have carded as many as 600 of the wriggling little creatures in a single night. Once they make it to their destinations, the salamanders start their underwater mating dance: a roiling, wriggling, reproductive melee just below the surface. The salamander migrations are not unique to Vermont, of course, and the Bonnyvale center (www.beec.org) is preparing a handbook on setting up crossing guard programs. It will include training information for the salamander handlers. For example, every once in a while, crossing guards see a salamander apparently headed in the wrong direction. "Whichever way they're pointing, we move them," said Hollis Burbank-Hammarlund, director of the Bonnyvale center and a frequent salamander crossing guard. "Generally, the salamander knows best. Maybe he's already mated and is heading back home." The cad.--Sam Hooper Samuels |
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