Look! Look, What We Found!!

Steven and I went on a recon mission to a local pond that freezes over thick enough to sneaker skate on to check the status of it a couple weeks ago. Sure enough, frozen solid, well not all the way through, but enough anyway. (I think I must have been in mid-slide or coming to a halt and trying to keep my balance. I was not playing "Airplane"!) As we were checking it out I was examining what I might find in the water below the ice as the ice was like glass! Completely clear! It was so amazing!

One year several years back I got to see some sort of goldfish or Koi swimming about beneath the ice, last year nothing... This year a salamander!! Or at least what I thought was one, anyways... They're not too common around here, and look nothing like the ones I grew up with in the NW. In fact what I learned when I started google searching salamanders in AZ is that there is in fact only one in the whole state with a few sub-species (cousins) AND one of them is endangered! Wow!

It's called a Tiger Salamander and the one we saw was in it's aquatic gilled adult stage.

Rather prehistoric looking, don't you think?
Thanks to this link for the info and photo!
http://www.reptilesofaz.com/Turtle-Amphibs-Subpages/h-a-tigrinum.html