August 31, 2004
newts and angel dust
One dead bird, a baby mouse, a salamander (technically, a newt). That's the death count for the garden so far this summer. The only one of the deceased I actually saw in the cat's mouth was the mouse. But it appeared to have already expired by the time I "rescued" it. The bird might have hit the window or succumbed to who knows what. Where do old birds die? The newt deceived me for an entire 24 hours. I noticed it in the large water bowl I regularly fill up and which serves as the mammal watering hole for the backyard. It's eyes were open and newts do hang out in the bottom of creeks during the summer.
That was my wishful scenario. I am fond of the newts. They live under the big terra cotta pots in the winter and I've seen their babies under the pile of old wood decking stacked on the driveway. I don't see them in summer and assumed they were hibernating underground--like toads do. But the tree guy inadvertently squished one when he moved the big chunk of cement serving as a gate stoop by the side of the house. And now the newt death toll is 2 for the year. Newt No. 2 went into the compost bin with the recently deceased mouse.
On a brighter note, Rich's gift of the Angel Dust dahlia has bloomed. It is a stunning pale cream and white double-petaled affair that looks like a lotus. I picked one and set it on the kitchen table so I could admire it's perfection.
Posted by briggs at August 31, 2004 12:09 PM
Hello, Briggs. I'm an old colleague of Xian's, and I've been interested in True Dirt since he linked to the Hills Fire piece. My wife and I also garden (OK; she gardens) with a combination of natives, other drought-tolerant stuff, and inherited things like oleander. Anyway, I have one minor pedantic quibble: although the squashed little guy at the right is certainly a newt, the baby salamanders under your woodpile probably aren't.
Newts breed in water, so AFAIK baby newts are essentially tadpoles--completely aquatic larvae with gills that are replaced with lungs as the newt matures. The other salamanders you're seeing are probably one of our local lungless salamanders, which lay eggs in moist places out of water. These guys all breathe through their skin and skip the transformation stage, so you'll find juveniles as well as adults. Locally we have slender salamander (like an earthworm but with tiny, vestigial legs), ensatina (stockier and with a burgundy color similar to a newt), and arboreal salamander (also stocky and more or less black).