Happy Friday — we’re back with more Hot Bones and the gentle nudge that I love nothing more than reader responses from previous editions. For example: My mother-in-law sending a text of Annie’s vegan mac & cheese in her grocery cart. Or this from another reader:

Instead of Daiya’s plant-based cheese, Kaila recommends a scoop of Treeline’s cashew-based alternative with hot noodles. Looks like the Cville Wegmans and Whole Foods (plus the Giant in Pantops) carry a few options — will test this out and report back.

In the meantime, this week is a little more on the whimsy side than the life hack vibe. It’s about how frogs, salamanders, and other wriggly wet things make life weird and exciting. But most importantly, it’s about how we can enjoy that during cocktail hour.

G and I usually take turns freaking out about politics these days, and last Saturday was my day for sweaty knees, a constant racing heartbeat, and the urge to walk into the sea. It’s a tough mix of sensations that many of you are probably also working through — but let me tell you something, the only way to make this feeling worse is to take a drive on Route 29.

Every city has a Route 29. It’s the main thoroughfare that we grew out of back when PT Cruisers roamed the earth. It’s a two-lane road that should be six, where you have just enough runway to get up to 55 mph only to crest a hill and see the light go from yellow to red — or worse, red to green but with 50 idling cars in front of you. 

I assure you marriages have ended and heart attacks have been caused by this road. 

Having basically only left the house over the past two months for groceries and tennis, I’d forgotten how much this road sucks. Saturday was a definitive reminder that yes it still sucks. That’s when I found myself hitting every yellow light on the way to Polo Grounds Road to see the “salamander underpass.”

I never would have known just driving by (hands in a 10 and 2 death grip), but apparently there’s a colony of spotted salamanders that lives between Route 29 and Polo Grounds Road. And every year, when the weather starts to de-Narnia and turn springlike, the salamanders know it’s time to migrate from the forest to the vernal pools next to the river.

I found out about this because last week a Reddit post caught my eye:

If you’ve ever heard peepers in your backyard on an early spring night, you know all about this. Or if you’re in a city maybe you’ve seen frogs starting to pop out around local parks, getting ready for — this from the lips of the National Park Service — “explosive” breeding events. Salamanders fit the bill too, moving to spring pools to mate and lay eggs before the water dries up in the summer. Typically they do this on The Big Night, which as far as I can tell is just Mardi Gras narrated by David Attenborough. 

The Cville Reddit community really rose to the occasion with this post, adding their own memories of The Big Night, as well as what I thought at first must be local legend: 

“Historically, folks escorted salamanders across Polo Grounds Rd on that february-ish night. The new developer put in underpasses for them. I don't know if they use them, nor whether their habitat was destroyed by the apartments.”

Salamander escorts seemed too good to be true. As did underpasses. Surely someone planted this to troll me into writing an HB post on it. 

But it’s real. 

There’s a full Daily Progress article on it, with a truly reprehensible headline to boot: “Tunnel of love: Developer accommodating love-struck salamanders.” There’s also this one from the Piedmont Discovery Center that dials down the salamander mating puns.

The full story: 

And yet, in what may be the only “developer becomes the hero” archetype, Riverbend Development decided to construct a salamander underpass to solve the issue once and for all. 

“Most of the time, the issues revolve around overcrowding at the schools or too much traffic,” Alan Taylor of Riverbend told the Daily Progress. “It was nice to work on something that virtually everyone feels good about.”

The underpass was installed as part of a road renovation project — and that’s where the story seems to end.

I turned off Route 29 last Saturday, rolled down the passenger-side window, and the most amazing sound flooded the car. The cheep-cheep-cheeps of hundreds (thousands?) of peepers in the low-lying meadows near the Rivanna River.

So much of the excitement of spring is visual (daffodils, green shoots, grass stains on pants), which is why I love peepers so much — these little frogs are the audiobook version of spring. Maybe this means salamanders are nearby too. Big Night, here we come!

Of course, in the time it took to roll down the windows all the way, the peeper music ended. I was left with a one-chord crescendo like in Catholic mass — or the brief second at work when your AirPods haven’t synced yet but you’ve already pressed play on Wonderwall.

I kept driving down Polo Grounds (no polo fields to be found, just fyi), searching for more peeper sounds and hoping there’d be some sort of Holland Tunnel signage or at least a neon board flashing “Salamanders, welcome! E-Z PASS LEFT, CASH RIGHT.” 

I’m not sure what I was expecting when I decided to take the death rattle drive out 29 this morning with the loose idea of “finding salamanders,” but I was starting to realize any semblance of a plan would have been nice.

Instead, I drove up and down the road a lot, 10 miles below the speed limit with a pile of cars behind me. Very on brand for my 2006 Subaru. I saw some grates over the road at one point that looked promising, but no signs confirming my suspicions (and no salamanders around in the broad daylight to give me a thumbs up).

G texted me a while later, asking if I was ever going to come home.

That was my cue to abandon ship. I turned back onto the chaos of 29, very much wishing there was a Subaru underpass that led me all the way to Ethos Wine & Tea, where a glass of bubbly in the slanting sunlight, a spouse, and a best friend awaited me.

The conditions this past Wednesday looked ideal for The Big Night: warm and wet. I had planned to drive back over to Polo Grounds Rd to see if I could spot any salamanders, or at least hear the peepers again, but the combination of tennis exhaustion, lightning in the distance, and the highly cultivated homing response to be couch-adjacent after sunset made me bag it. 

The good news is that in addition to The Big Night, it turns out there are many Little Spring Nights, where you can listen to peepers and scope out salamanders — it just might not be a mass migration.

In fact, throughout this spring you can do this:

🥾 In hiking boots with a guide: On March 14 and 22 there’s an educational event where you can experience the vernal pools off 29 at night (sign up here). And earlier that day on the 22nd, there’s a cleanup party. Plus in April, Wild Virginia is putting on a vernal pools field trip south of Waynesboro.

🤳 On your phone during a meeting: Turns out the Piedmont Discovery Center is a great follow on Instagram. Super cool photos and videos, including of a spotted salamander literally crossing the road, as well as this toad that just ate a disco ball.

🍻 In your backyard, with a drink: Could also be by a fire pit, on a deck, on your couch. The important part is the drink: Peeper Ale by Maine Beer Company (you typically can get this at Whole Foods etc). This is the true sign of spring in my family — light but flavorful cold beer that you hold in a cold hand while you walk around looking at flowers and bugs. Maine Beer Co is a 1% for the Planet company and they have a great origin story.

It turns out those grates I saw were the underpasses. Not super sexy, but what infrastructure fits that adjective. Let’s call them innovative instead.