In the hills of Hidalgo in central Mexico, there was a town called Durango. It was small, with few visitors, and was very quiet. Indeed, there was little to set it apart from the many other small towns scattered all over the Hidalgo region, which had few visitors and were very quiet indeed. Until one day, when Rovito came to town.
Searching for a pinky-size splayed footed salamander
Sean Rovito was a stranger, but the townspeople greeted him kindly. Still, he was a stranger and he asked strange questions.
“Can you tell me about the Cave Splay-footed salamander?” he said. The townspeople said they did not know the cave salamander.
“What does it look like?” they asked.
“It is small. Tiny. The size of my little finger, with a long tail and limbs, bulbous black eyes, an oval head and a dark brown back with a light tan stomach beneath. And it has splayed feet.”
“Well, we have never seen it before. Why do you ask us?”
“Well, 73 years ago…” Rovito began, as a small crowd gathered around the stranger and his strange question, “two men named Harold Woodall and Robert Livingston came to Durango. They journeyed into the hills, wandering beneath the afternoon sun until they found a mysterious hole in the ground. One produced a rope and lowered the other into the hole. The hole turned out to be a tunnel which fell straight down into the darkness and the damp, some 7m below. There, they found a cavern. And within the cavern, they found an animal that no human had ever seen before. This was the Cave Splay-footed salamander.
“But since then,” Rovito continued, as the crowd tightened around him, “the salamander has disappeared. No one has seen it in over 70 years.”
“Perhaps it is extinct?
“Yes, perhaps. That is what many others say. But I believe it is still alive. I believe it has been hiding in its quiet, damp, dark cave somewhere near Durango. Tell me,” said Rovito, in the way that strangers do, “Do you know of any caves nearby like the one I have described?”
The townspeople thought for a moment. “Yes.”
The secretive salamander and the not so secret cave
The hills above town were no good for farming and so the townspeople rarely ventured into them. The ground was tough and dry, with only occasional coarse, thinning patches of oaks and pines breaking through the rocky landscape. Each of the trees was twisted as if it had been trying to physically wrench the water up through the cracked ground.
The townspeople led Rovito along a path made by oaks, agaves and other desert plants. Eventually, it opened into a prickly patch of forest at the head of a ravine. Here, the townspeople presented him with the cave. Rovito had imagined that entering the cave might involve some dramatic, terrifying and vaguely heroic descent through a mysterious opening in the rock. The townspeople would help by lowering him cautiously into the darkness below and the darkness itself would be silent and mysterious. Instead, the entrance buzzed furiously with the noise of insects and was no more than a large crack in the rock which he could freely walk into, although he would have to stoop slightly to do so. The townspeople explained that they knew this cave well; they used this cave as a water source during the dry months. As such, it had not gradually been filled with rubbish, graffiti, fire or other forms of activities to alleviate boredom, as many of Hidalgo’s other caves had. There were certainly no salamanders in there, they assured him.
Rovito remained optimistic, though. He stepped up to the entrance, and considered saying something dramatic before ducking into the darkness. When he opened his mouth, however, a cloud of insects drifted out from the entrance and into his throat. He choked and then coughed, managing to clear them away. He then stepped into the cave. Where he found the Cave Splay-footed salamander.
As it turned out, the salamander had been idling just inside the entrance, almost as if it were waiting. It stood before him, posed upon the rock floor with its webbed, chubby-toed feet twisting in odd directions. Its dark eyes stared up at Rovito. Or perhaps they stared at the insects which expanded through the cavern like gas. The eyes flickered from one to the other with incredible speed. And then it was gone, disappearing into the deeper darkness of the cave.
Rovito moved forward, trying vaguely to trace its path. Instead, he found another group of salamanders spread across the rock. These were Big-footed salamanders – different to the Cave splay-footed ones, but also incredibly rare having disappeared from most of the places it had once called home. Rovito marvelled at finding it sharing a home with the Cave Splay-footed salamander.
He travelled deeper into the cave, chewing the insect-air and steadying himself upon the slick walls. Eventually the floor began to thicken around his feet and turn to mud, and when he did not find any more incredibly rare salamanders, he turned back. At the surface, Rovito announced his discoveries to the townspeople. The townspeople felt it called for a celebration.
Rediscovery and hope for one-of-a-kind amphibian
“Rovito,” said the townspeople as they passed around plates of food and bottles of beer, “Tell us – now that the cave salamander has returned, will it stay here in Durango?”
He considered the question along with the plate of Barbicoa that had been slid into his lap. The townspeople had brought Rovito to a Quinceañera to celebrate one of their young daughters becoming a woman, here they had plied him with a stream of questions and a river of food.
“I believe so.” He placed a hand upon the clear, plastic container within which a wild salamander stood, unmoving except for its eyes. “I’m not sure exactly how many live in the cave, but – as you say – the land up there is no good for farming, so they’re not likely to be disturbed. I suppose that the isolation means there is always a chance of disease sneaking in and consuming them, in fact, I know of a particularly nasty one that preys on amphibians. But as long as the caves are preserved, I believe that they will be safe for now.”
The townspeople nodded, but did not say anything. As the crowd and the evening heat thickened around him, Rovito realised that they the conversation had become a story and now they were expecting an ending.
“I suppose that the same can’t be said for all creatures like the salamander, though. While these hills seem safe, you should know that half the amphibians in Mexico -211 species – have begun to disappear. You will have to be mindful of its presence now – do not let this salamander stray from your minds just because it is so good at staying out of your sight.
The townspeople nodded, but did not say anything. Instead, someone arrived with more food, someone else spilled a beer and, in time, the crowd began to fray. Eventually, Rovito made his excuses and left – for he had to get the salamander safely back to the laboratory, and he could not accept drinks for he was driving, and he had eaten so much already, and so on.
In the salamander’s absence, the townspeople began to talk of more immediate things, like how beautiful the birthday girl looked in her dress, which uncle had drunk too many beers and eaten too much, how hot it had been lately and how quiet the weather had been.
When the party finally ended, a stillness settled over the town of Durango once more. It spread outwards from the town, across the cooling ground and up into the hills. Here, it wound its way between the balding trees and trickled into the mouths of caves. Inside one – the air crackling with insects – a salamander gripped a dangling stalactite. His splayed feet tensed against the wet rock. His eyes darted about, picking apart the cloud of insects that drifted just out of reach. And his tongue swelled in his throat as it waited.
References
- IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. 2017. Chiropterotriton mosaueri. http://www.iucnredlist.org/details/59228/0
- Sean Rovito. 2010. Lost Frogs Update: Rediscovering a Salamander in a Mexican Cave. http://blog.conservation.org/2010/09/lost-frogs-update-rediscovering-salamander-in-mexican-cave/
- Woodall HT. 1941. A New Mexican Salamnader of the Genus Oedipus. Occasional Papers of the Museum of Zoology, Vol. 444, pp. 1-4.
- Black, R. 2010. 'Lost' frogs found after decades. http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-11385774.
About the author
Sam Needs is a Welsh writer with a Master’s in Creative Writing from Aberystwyth University. He has worked for the literary magazine New Welsh Review short-listing submissions of poetry and as a social media coordinator. He is currently based in Perth, Australia, where he performs regularly as a poet. He works with the Said Poets Society, a non-profit who help young people to express themselves through storytelling and performance poetry. In 2018 will be serving as a mentor to competitors in the 2nd annual West Australian Youth Slam, and completing work on his first novel.
