I was moving some timber at the back of the grange building today when I met up with an old friend:
Periodically we unearth a Salamander hiding under a stone or piece of wood, sightings are always in the same area between the stone grange building and the collapsed old wine store. Although I can't identify if this is the same one we've found every year or so over the last five years (the markings all look the same to me in every photo I have) there's a good chance it is as they have been known to live for 50 years in captivity and, apart from brief periods in the mating season, are essentially solitary creatures.
Salamanders are beautiful creatures with a remarkable place in folk mythology (they are called Fire Salamanders in French (Salamandre du Feu)) and were believed to live in flames due to the frequency with which they emerged from wood after it had been put onto a fire. The town crests of Sarlat-le-Canéda in the Dordogne and Le Havre contain Salamanders emerging from flames. They do not live in the UK and are at the edge of their range in Brittany - on past sightings it will be 2016 before we see her again and hopefully she'll have consumed a large quantity of slugs and snails by that point!
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