State Reptile Cameo

We have a walk-out basement in our house, and there is a window well that goes into one of the downstairs bedrooms.  It manages to collect all kinds of critters, and most recently we had a reptilian peeping tom gazing in the window. 

I thought it was appropriate that he was black and yellow, fitting with the Bit of Honey stable colors, but after looking it up online we discovered that it was a Western Tiger Salamander.  It is the Colorado State Amphibian and can get to be up to 14" long.  This one was closer to 7", and is a little easier to see in the bucket I used to get it out of the window well.

It seemed grateful for an elevator lift out of the window well, as soon as I climbed down into the well and placed the bucket near the ground it hopped right into my plastic tub.  I did accidentally startle it when I peered inside to take a closer look, but it calmly waddled out of the tub when I placed it near a tree farther away from the house. 

The website statesymbolsusa.org mentions:  "Tiger Salamanders inhabit areas near bodies of water, including damp forest areas, pine barrens, and arid plains, where the soil is easily burrowed. Tiger Salamanders are also known to occupy abandoned mammal and invertebrate burrows. They are primarily terrestrial as adults, but their juvenile larval stage is entirely aquatic, having external gills."

I suspect this one grew up in the ponds in our middle pasture, and perhaps journeyed up towards the house in search of snacks as it made its way from abandoned hole to hole in the fields.  That's the story I came up with, anyway.  It was fun to see a new kind of critter!