Saved a salamander.
When I had been at work about an hour (still dark outside), two of the teens who work in the media section were "ON ABOUT SOMETHING" and I had buttloads of shit to do, so I tried to ignore them. They were hootin' and hollerin' about something, when finally one of them came over and said I should come see this weird wet lizard they found.
You probably know the look I gave him. After about a minute of stammering the kid could still not produce a discernible answer to the question, "WTF are you talking about?" I decided to investigate all the noise. These two teen age boys had this poor, cold, drying salamander trapped in a corner. It had obviously scurried in from the storm last night and, since it could not find water inside a BB store, it was in rough shape, with hair, bits of cardboard and dust bunny nests clinging to it, and all that made so much worse by the two teens poking at it with a three foot long, plastic screwdriver thingy that is normally used to adjust the overhead display projectors.
I grabbed the thing and whacked them both in the shins (playfully, but dreaming that it was a machete), reached down and picked the salamander up. They both went, "EEEEeeeeeeeeeeWWWWwwwwwwwwww!"
Honestly, where the hell have these kids been all their lives?
It was a big one! There is a pet store nearby, so my first thought was that it was an escapee, but I only wanted to set it free. On my way out to find wet ground with this enormous critter, only one other of the seven people who were working there, knew what it was. So, I asked him if he wanted to try a lick? He cringed. (I doubt he even knows anything about the psychotropic alkaloid compounds their skin exudes)
This salamander was longer than my forearm and almost as big in diameter as my wrist. We're talking about probably a six or seven year old great, great, great grandfather of a "wet lizard" that I was quickly shuttling to safety outside, back to the wild.
I was a real hero today to an old salamander! I don't mind that he tried to bite my finger off (they don't have strong jaw muscles or teeth) at all, but it showed me that he still wanted desperately to live on.
