Salamander
◊ I was pulling up weeds in the garden for the first time since I've moved in and cussing out the spider plant for trying to take over the yard using other plants as footholds when I came eye-to-eye with something I hadn't seen a very long time.
Curled up half under a leaf with a pile of slugs and looking just as surprised as myself was an arboreal salamander. Always Daddy's little girl, I scooped up the salamander and ran to my parent's house to show my dad, just like I did when I was a little kid. We snapped a couple of pictures of it and I let it go in my garden.
It had been a long time since I'd seen an adult salamander. I used to find them every spring out in the rock garden when I was a little kid, but by the time I was about 12 they were getting smaller and smaller and harder to find. I gave up, finally, sure that I wouldn't see one again.
I never did figure out if their gradual disappearance in our neighborhood was due to development, a decade-long drought, or water pollution; it might've been all three. Then again, it might just be gentrification: bored salamanders could very well be leaving the blandness of suburbia en masse in favor of low-rent urban areas, eventually pricing out the artists and students and blue-collar workers who lived there first. I liked the image of a wealthy young salamander couple redecorating a loft or warehouse with exotic knick-knacks and funky furniture made from industrial cast-offs. They could shop at Whole Foods and yap on cell phones and drive tiny amphibian-sized SUVs.
But deep down I knew they weren't meant for that kind of thing and out on the Los Gatos Creek Trail, a favorite spot for yuppie recreation, I found proof. A tiny salamander had tried jogging on the paved path and had been crushed by a bike or running shoe.
I was stunned to see a salamander at all. It was like someone throwing me a surprise high school reunion instead of a birthday party. I knelt next to the creature — it looked young, fresh from its private school where all the salamanders wore matching uniforms and took amphetamines to stay awake to study for their final exams.
As I leaned close, I realized with shock and disgust that the salamander was still alive. It was dying, and frightened. Its broken limbs churned in an agonizingly slow power-walk as its back curled into the death-asana, its final act of yoga.
I bent low to meet the salamander, plucked tiny headphones from its ears, pulled a miniscule Walkman from its splayed toes. Then I stood up and smashed the animal under my heel, giving it the quick death it deserved — free of mortgage payments, piano lessons, credit card bills and talk radio, all the trappings of a life it was never meant to live.