Spotted Salamanders

After the last big flood, someone must have decided it was easier to bury flood debris rather than remove it.  I'm told FEMA flood insurance often prescribes that, and some floodplain owners have had to watch dozers bury entire trailers in their lower fields rather than pay for big trucks to remove them.   But there is an upside.  It seems that one of every three or four times I discover buried debris, I find big spotted salamanders (Ambystoma maculatum) using it as an underground cavity.  I first learned of these when a good friend and biology major in college had one as a pet, because her father studied the ability of newts and salamanders to regenerate their eyes at the University of Pennsylvania back in the 1980's.