If you were a kid and were asked to name your favorite animal, what would it be? Dog? Lion? Giraffe? Salamander?
To be honest, I’m not even sure how the salamander might make the short list of suggestions for a favorite animal. And I do not say that to slight the salamander – they are really interesting creatures, as evidenced by this brief bit of description found on Wikipedia:
They are typically characterized by a superficially lizard-like appearance, with slender bodies, blunt snouts, short limbs projecting at right angles to the body, and the presence of a tail in both larva and adult… Unique among vertebrates, they are capable of regenerating lost limbs, as well as other damaged parts of the body… Some salamander species are fully aquatic throughout their life, some take to the water intermittently and others are entirely terrestrial as adults.
But a “favorite animal”? It is just not a choice I would expect to even occur to a kid. But that is no matter – my very own precious daughter did choose the salamander as her “favorite animal” in second grade, and so made this clay figure for a class project.
I did ask her about it at the time – “How did you come to choose the salamander? I don’t recall ever hearing you talk about them…” And she said, “There was a list, and all the good ones were already taken.” At that point I shifted gears and tried to build up the poor slighted salamander in her eyes, but it was no use. She had felt pressured to choose him, and so he was not really her favorite.
But her clay figure, although his little feet have chipped off and not, apparently, re-grown as promised… is spot-on “totes adorbs,” as James Earl Jones might say.
And treasured, at least by her mother.
