Aidan made this in early spring, he called it a mouse house. He got a piece of American cheese (twice, because crows found it) so that it could be a rug that the mice could eat too. Besides a living room, it featured a bathroom and a lookout tower.
It's been very dry here and we decided that carrying a watering can back and forth from the house to the garden twenty times every night wasn't cutting it. We rounded up a variety of old hoses to run the 200 feet to the garden. One of them was curled up in the basement with a tennant.
Salamanders generally do not enter buildings. On occasion, they may be found in a damp basement, if the basement stays moist most of the time and there are items lying close to the damp floor. In such cases, all openings 1/4 inch (0.6 cm) and larger should be sealed to exclude salamanders
I've been telling people that the basement was all dried out.
Adult tiger salamanders live on land in habitats such as forests, grasslands, or marshes (Petranka 1998). These salamanders are known as "mole salamanders" because they live underground for most of their lives. They can be found under rocks, stumps, and in burrows. In the breeding season of late winter/early spring, tiger salamanders migrate to temporary ponds created by melted snow and rainwater, where large numbers of salamanders gather to mate.
I suppose our basement qualifies as a temporary pond.
We went out hunting for earthworms to feed it. I didn't think we'd have any trouble finding an earthworm in the garden under the cardboard, but everywhere we dug the soil was dry and there were no worms. We tried beds that I water regularly and a shady bed closer to the house with no luck. The lack of rain had driven them deep into the ground. We tried some other bugs but it didn't eat them. This morning our salamander got relocated to a trail at a local wetland where I am sure he was very happy after getting over the thrill of being carried around by a five-year old.
Comments
It's so good to hear relocation stories instead of "pest control" ones! Yay! My honey has some pictures of salamanders (and spiders and newts and other crawlies) up on his flickr page, if you are interested. Good to see you back.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/crow/
I love A's mouse house, and how exciting for him to have a pet salamader - at least very temporarily. :)
Mortgage Quotes |
Home Mortgage |
Second Mortgage |
Home Equity Line of Credit | HELOC | Ameriquest Mortgage