My mom asked me to do some yard work the one day over the summer. She wanted me to move a pile of mulch for her. As I was raking the mulch, I found a snail. I showed her my discovery, (procrastinating so I didn’t have to do the chore because let’s be honest, what teenager like doing chores over the summer break), and went back to moving the mulch. No more than 5 minutes after I found the snail I found that orange thing. I picked it up and put it in a flower pot and took it over to my mom. My intentions were to ask her if it was poisonous and what I should do with it. When I took it over to her though, she didn’t let me get a word in before she started screaming, “WHAT IS THAT THING?! OH MY GOD MADDISON GET IT AWAY FROM ME!” (There were some curse words in there too). I don’t understand why she was afraid of it. It wasn’t going to hurt her or anything.
I googled a bunch of different types of lizards and assumed that it was a really big salamander but I have no idea if that was what it was or not.
I ended up setting it free in my mom’s flower garden and haven’t seen another one since then.
Neither has my mom.