Messing with the ecosystem
For the past few weeks, after the rains have stopped, I have had water running across the bottom of my driveway. At first, I didn’t really notice – except when the mornings were particularly cold – because then it would freeze into a sheet of ice even while the water continued to run around it. It made traversing the driveway a bit scary some days.
Upon closer inspection this week, I discovered that the ditch that runs alongside the driveway had collapsed. The water had found an easier route around the collapse, which just so happens to be across the bottom of the driveway. Sunday, armed with only a shovel, I went down to correct the problem.
There were plants that had slid down the hill that were growing in the ditch, as well as additional mud and rocks, and the root systems caused me some difficulty. I started at the bottom so that the water would drain properly as I got to it. When I was about halfway done, my son, who had completed his own task, came down to hang out with me. He hadn’t been there more than a minute when he said, “Look, mom! A crawfish.”
“Pick it up,” I told him. “Take a look at it and then when you’re done put it back.”
A little afraid of its pinchers, he set it in a shallow cardboard tray. About that time, I pointed out a salamander that was also living in the ditch. My boy came over to pick it up, as well. I was excited that he was enjoying nature. Suddenly, he exclaimed, “Mom! The crawfish just pinched the tail off the salamander.”
I climbed out of the ditch to look, and sure enough the tail was lying alone in the bottom of the box. The crawfish had used his other pincher to grab a hold of the salamander’s leg and was working to remove it, as well.
If I had seen this sight in naturally occurring circumstances, I would’ve let it go and watch how it played out. But I felt a huge sense of responsibility that we had removed both of these creatures from their natural environment and put them together in one box.
I grabbed the salamander and the crawfish and had my son get a stick. It took a couple of tries to find one that was both sturdy and slender, but we used the stick to pry the crawfish pincher open and release the salamander’s leg.
Then we released the salamander back into the ditch in the general vicinity of where we had picked him up.
“I hope he makes it,” I said to my son.
He replied that salamanders’ tails can grow back. He said they have the ability to release them in order to escape from predators.
“We’re not gonna kill the crawfish, are we, Mom?” he asked me then.
“No, buddy, of course not,” I said. “He was just doing what he was designed to do. It’s our fault for putting them together.”
We took the crawfish back down to the bottom of the ditch where we had found him and released him. I finished cleaning out the ditch and went up to the house.
I woke up the next morning extremely sore. I thought about complaining, until I remembered that it could have been way worse. I could have been as sore as a salamander missing his tail. Short of that, I really have no right to complain.
Laura Zoeller can be reached at zoeller5@verizon.net.