Well now, don't I feel silly!

Turns out my little muskrat neighbor is actually a Nutria! Myocastor coypus are invasive and considered pests most everywhere. It is definitely is more beaver-like than a muskrat. I saw one yesterday while riding my bike through the woods and now that I know the difference, I wonder how was it I EVER mistook it for a muskrat in the first place! They are so obviously different!
Well, in other exciting news it snowed in Corvallis!! This is a very exciting thing because usually they just get straight up rain until June! I have been told the weather this Winter has been particularly odd though. We've gotten a great deal more sun than last year.
However a large storm system is approaching but will mostly give us tons of rain Tuesday and Friday. People up in Washington state are getting feet of snow! I think if that ever happened to little Corvallis people would flip out. My lab-mate told me the town sold their only snowplow last year. That's how little it snows here! Rain, just cold rain.
You know I never really paid attention to the weather until I started doing field work. Especially work that required appropriate weather in order to be carried out. When I worked at the migratory banding station in Louisiana we were constantly looking up the rain and wind report to see if we should close or open the nets. Woe is the bird that get's caught in a mist-net on a windy day! A few times I would come upon nets and there would be a gust of wind and the poor things would just be swaying in the breeze, terrified no doubt! Last summer was an unusually windy summer with strong southern winds.
When I was an undergrad I helped this guy catch salamanders in the Jefferson National Forest once. We had to wait for the right night with rain and then we could go out! I was not good at catching them although now I really want to try again. I am learning about salamanders in my Amphibians and Reptiles class and they are so interesting and adorable! I like the little chunky ones. They are spectacularly colorful (like birds!) so they are easy to find appealing.This is a Macedonian Crested Newt, Triturus macedonicus, from Greece. An interesting factoid I learned was that among the 3 groups of amphibians (frogs, caecilians and salamanders) only in salamanders can you see paedomorphic forms. This type of growth means you have retained juvenile/larval traits as a sexually mature adult. They reach sexual maturity without metamorphosis! Hence the name paedo+morph=child+form.
There are 2 types: neoteny and progenesis but this is more than we care to know now.Look at that big ol' paedomorph! Some salamander species retain the larval form due to a number of reasons (i.e. environment, chemical cues, hybridization, etc).

Perhaps the most well-known paedomorphic salamander is the Mexican axolotl, Ambystoma mexicanum:
This cheery-looking bugger is actually very sad because Axolotls are critically endangered in the wild. You see, they are only found in two lakes outside Mexico City, Lake Xochimilco and Lake Chalco. Lake Chalco was drained a long time ago and Lake Xochimilco is very altered due to draining, pollution, canals, etc.
Ok well it is snowing heavily again so I think I will go home for the day...I hope you had fun reading about weather and paedomorphic salamanders!