I Drove Over an Hour for a Dookie. 6-21-2020

I love Northern Dusky Salamanders. I lovingly call them Dookies. They're plain, brown, and pretty much nondescript but I love 'em. The closest place to us to see them is 45 miles away but Andrea wasn't interested in driving that long for the rather small stretch where we can find them. So I hit the internet and looked for a new place in the area that looked suitable for Dooks and looked to be a bit more exciting. I came up with an Audubon sanctuary in the same town that has plenty of water areas.

It was already almost 90° when we got there so we knew it would be slim pickings. The place looked promising so we started our recon. The woods were cool enough to have a Redback under a log.


We saw some cool Stag Beetles, too.


Doesn't it figure that when you're targeting Dookies (The son I never wanted... "I've never heard of anyone targeting Duskys before"), every Redback you see is dark and fat?


We were zig-zagging our way towards the water and saw a few more Redbacks. And a small Eft!


We finally made it to a slow moving brook that was picturesque and lovely. The water was muddy (evidently, it had rained in the night) but still very nice. I had a Two-line squiggle away from my camera, but nothing else. We moved through and rested for a while. It was hot and my feet (wearing just some Chucks) were really bothering me. The woods were cooler and quiet; there weren't many folks dumb enough to be out on a day like this.

We moved on and found another section of the brook... now this looked promising.


I started flipping and soon had a Two-lined that didn't squiggle away.


Andrea sat on the boardwalk sweating while I fruitlessly flipped and flipped and realized that perhaps my computer recon skills weren't that great... it didn't look like Dookies were here. Andrea and her friend watched me fail.

The water was too slow, the habitat not montane enough... I don't know. It had been worth a try.

The canopy was filled with screaming Grackles and Jays and we saw why... a Cooper's Hawk (#51) had come down to the water to cool off. We watched it for a while. Such a beautiful and majestic animal. I felt kind of bad for it, getting screamed at just for existing. There's a lot of that in the world.


Sure, it might have just eaten someone's baby, but can't we all just get along?

Since we were just 20 minutes away from the place that we know Dookies are at, we drove cross-town to try our luck. It was well into the 90s by now. This Wood Frog surprised us as we approached the stream.


Unfortunately, it has been drier than I realized. This stream usually cascades but it was barely a drip right now.


Luckily, there were a few puddles and wet spots and I got a gorgeous Two-line before too long.


About 15 or 20 minutes in, we finally found our prize... the plain, brown wrapper of salamanders, the Northern Dusky Salamander. Our first of 2020.

The majestic Dookie.

We found one more before heading home.


I don't know why I love these nondescript little buggers so much, but I do. In fact, when we have our forever home and I have my forever car, I plan on getting the vanity plate DESMOG. Because the Desmognathus family of salamander is a badass group of mofos.