A salamander in the basement

A few weeks ago, I did a blog post about pets my family has had, but I forgot about one that was sort of a pet, on accident.

One rainy fall day when I was in second grade, I was home sick from school, sitting in our basement on our off-white four-cushion couch with the blue quilt my parents got for their wedding. I noticed something moving on the carpet, and when I looked at it, I was surprised.

"Dad! There's a lizard on the floor!"

I'm not sure why my dad was home that day, but he was. When he came and examined it, he explained that it was a salamander, rather than a lizard. I think it was black, and it had little white bumps on it--I don't know if that was part of it, or if it had a disease, or if things were stuck to it.

I don't remember exactly what happened, but we ended up putting it in an aquarium. I can't remember whether we had it sitting around or if we borrowed it from my aunt.

Despite our efforts to nurse it, it died on the fourth day we had it.

It seems like I might have seen another salamander in our window well years later, but I'm not sure about that. That's probably how this particular salamander ended up in our house. We've had lots of spiders and small millipedes, and occasional centipedes and Jerusalem crickets, in our house, but that's probably the largest invader we've had in our basement. It was a strange occurrence indeed.