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KY Press: A slippery summer find

W

wes

Guest
<u>DAILY NEWS</u> (Bowling Green, Kentucky) 13 August 06 A slippery summer find (Geordon T. Howell)
Rain was coming down in wind-swept sheets and the wipers on the truck were turned to their highest setting. My dad and I were driving along a back road in Edmonson County when I noticed some oddly formed creature stationed in the middle of the narrow road.
“What's that?” I asked.
Dad shook his head and replied, “I don't know” as both of us edged closer to the dashboard and peered at the animal through the somewhat distorted wet glass of the windshield.
Since we were located in the proverbial “middle of nowhere,” the two of us elected to hop out of the vehicle in order to further investigate.
At first we could not determine if the lizard-like thing was still living, so I gently tapped its tail with the toe of my shoe. This nudge produced a reaction from the creature, but it seemed a little lethargic.
At 10 years old I was spellbound by this super-sized newt, so for further inspection purposes I reached down with both hands and wrestled the slimy thing all the way back to the bed of the truck, where I deposited it inside of a rain-filled lighting fixture globe.
A few miles down the road we stopped in at a country store for a soft drink and I enlisted the help of an old-timer I found sitting inside.
While grasping the slippery bowl the old man peered inside at the “little monster” and declared, “That thar is a mudpuppy, an' a big un' at that!”
A few days later I returned the creature to a nearby stream and for well over a decade believed that what I had found that rainy spring day was indeed a large mudpuppy.
However, not long ago I caught a program on the Discovery Channel that featured something very slimy, very ugly, and vaguely familiar - the show featured a distinctive amphibian called a hellbender.
What I had believed to be a mudpuppy for years was a relatively small hellbender instead. Snot otter, mud cat, Allegheny alligator - they are all aliases for this salamander that is capable of growing over two feet in length and living well into its 20s.
True mudpuppies, as opposed to hellbenders, never develop lungs; they keep gills throughout their whole lives, so finding one out of water crossing the road is virtually impossible.
Hellbenders themselves rarely exit the cool streams they inhabit, but under certain circumstances (i.e. heavy rains) they can live out of water for a short period. Their range extends from far southern New York state down into northern Alabama and Mississippi and west into Arkansas and Missouri.
These devil dogs are primarily nocturnal and spend most of their lives hidden under rocks waiting for unsuspecting prey such as crawdads and small fish to pass by their lair.
After mating, the female moves on while the male hellbender stays behind and guards the eggs throughout incubation in order to protect the next generation from becoming another snot otter's supper.
Because of their unique nature and longevity, hellbenders are considered an “indicator species.” Comparable to the smoke detectors in our homes, mud cats serve as living water-quality gauges for small, fast-moving creeks and rivers.
Unfortunately, their numbers are declining, which means so is water quality in many of their haunts. As far as the animal world is concerned, hellbenders live for an incredibly long time and have extremely sensitive skin that allows them to take breath through.
This being said, if a stream is polluted with chemicals, a buildup of toxins in the body is going to affect anything that lives in those waters for years. The long-term results of chemical water pollution may not always be apparent in shorter life-spanned inhabitants, but exposure to pollutants over a long time has led to plummeting hell dog numbers over much of their territory.
The trend is bad news because the replacement rate of such a long-lived, environment-dependent animal is very low. Excess sediment pollution from heavy erosion is also hard on snot otter numbers because the loose soil accumulates in the streambed and basically changes the makeup of the underwater environment and, in turn, hurts the hellbender population.
People are also a cause for the hellbenders' current population drain. I spend quite a bit of time barefoot in creeks and rivers and have never run across another hellbender. I have found many small salamanders and newts, but no more huge paddle-tailed hellbenders.
Nonetheless, many creek-goers and fishermen still come in contact with hellbenders while wading and, most likely because of their somewhat appalling appearance, dispose of them on the spot. Hellbenders don't bite, are not poisonous, do not pose a threat to fish numbers, and can basically be described as harmless.
Think of them like a puppy with mange, quite unattractive but friendly. In fact, the next time I cross paths with a snot otter I will feel quite fortunate - not only to have the pleasure of catching a glimpse of something so rare, but also to be spending time in such a healthy stream.

http://www.bgdailynews.com/articles/2006/08/13/sports/sports4.txt
 
P

paris

Guest
'snot otter' !!! i love it!
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