The Salamander King, Book Two: "For All Creatures Great and Small"

By Richard W Perkins

The Salamander King, Book Two: "For All Creatures Great and Small...", was re-published in March of  2022 after being edited by Melanie Lopata.

         The book has 76 pages, 33 illustrations and introduces the amazing eleven year old Becky Hage, new in town because her Dad, Dr. Jim Hage,

• Language: English
• Publisher: Brilliant Kids Book Publishing
• Release date: Nov 30, 2023
• ISBN: 9798869012401

Book preview

Chapter One

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There Can Be…Only One

W

ayne is your average ten-year-old fifth grader with dirty blonde hair, dressed in khaki shorts, a pastel blue and white plaid shirt, two-tone green and grey Osprey daypack and scuffed black and white hi-top Converse Chuck Taylor All Star’s.

It’s a warm, sunny afternoon in June 2007, and Wayne, as he often does after school, ventures into the woods to search the edges of Newton’s Pond. He looks under rocks near the water, the leaf litter and bark, and sometimes wades in to check under the lily pads for the myriad of newts, salamanders and red efts that populate the pond and surrounding area.

The pond is located outside the town of Lake Luzerne in the Adirondack Mountains of Upstate New York. The nearest home is a good two miles away from the pond. This land is privately owned by a large manufacturer of organic health products, and only non-motorized transportation is allowed—much to the dismay of the local ATV clubs, but, oh well. At the inlet is Calamity Creek that feeds the reservoir as well as the three-hundred-foot-wide tree lined pond. At the outlet, water from the pond flows under the small bridge that spans the river road and out through the concrete abutment with the steel grate that is there to capture debris, and down the gently sloping hill through more woods to the mighty Hudson River. This pond makes up the last part of the journey from the great river’s source, Lake Tear of the Clouds. The local game wardens are tasked with making sure the steel grate is not plugged and check it daily. After a heavy rainstorm, broken tree limbs can and do jam it up. The road to the town reservoir being flooded is not an option.

Wayne parks his original 1967 gold Schwinn five-speed bicycle—with high handlebars and leopard print banana seat—behind the outlet bridge abutment, not visible from the reservoir road. He anxiously hurries up through the path in the woods to the pond in search of newts and other salamanders.

In one part of the pond, a tree lies across a small shallow cove. The water is very clear and only a couple feet deep. Sometimes Wayne climbs out on the tree, lies down and scoops the green newts into his small net. The newts appear to be in suspended animation, floating in the still, clear sunlit water. After a brief look, he submerges the net back into the pond and newts casually swim away, unafraid.

For reasons completely unknown to him, these gentle amphibians fascinate the promising young herpetologist. Wayne is intrigued with their touch, physical beauty, colors, behavior and non-aggressive attitude toward him.

This particular Friday afternoon is near the end of the school year where he is going to graduate from fifth to sixth grade with very high honors. Wayne puts his daypack against a tree and checks the shoreline of the pond for more of the aquatic phase newts. He spots a few small sunfish darting to and fro, a shiny black teacup-sized painted turtle paddling by just under the surface, and a raft of leopard frogs with only their heads sticking out of the water as they sit on a bed of bright green algae, but no green flanked yellow-bellied newts.

He hears a repetitious low guttural sound that might be a tree frog and walks over to the adjacent Springtime vernal pool that—for the most part—has dried up and grown over. Following the strange noise, he digs a little deeper through some leaf litter in the pool’s basin. He peels the layers of leaves away, and there he happens upon a large three-foot-long and one-foot-wide piece of old bark that he had never seen before. 

Hmm, he thinks. Can I lift this up without it breaking? With both hands placed in strategic spots, Wayne carefully lifts the thick piece of bark and holds it in the air as his mouth drops open.

Holy mackerel! Wayne expels excitedly. He cannot believe his eyes. "That is one big…I mean humungous…red eft," he breathes quietly, not wanting to scare it away.

Wayne goes over the herpetological knowledge stored in his head. The red eft phase is the terrestrial stage of a newt’s mysterious three-stage life cycle; born in the water, their color is green, and then they go from water to land where they turn a reddish orange for two to three years and then back to the water they go, becoming green once again—all over an average fifteen-year period. And a red eft of grandiose size is all of four inches long from tip of nose to end