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Wild axolotls
How many wild axolotls are there in the UK? I heard a news segment on the radio this morning about an axolotl that had been caught in the wild in Wales. Here’s a transcript:
An endangered Mexican axolotl, a species of aquatic salamander, has been found living under a bridge near Bridgend in south Wales by a ten-year-old girl. The amphibian is the size of a small cat, and it’s the first documented discovery of the species in the wild in the UK.
Evie Hill was on holiday with her family when they stopped at the dipping bridge over the river Ogmore.
I went down to the bank and there was this thing with gills on its head and I’m like, that’s an axolotl, and I went, Mum, there’s an axolotl in the river, and she said, no there’s not, you’re not going back in the water, though I went back in the water anyway because I could see it and then I caught it and brought it back and my cousin’s going mum, Evie’s caught the axolotl, she’s caught it!
So of course the first thing I did was to open a browser and search for a picture of this small-cat-sized critter. I found a slightly longer standalone version of the story with a small picture of the axolotl’s face, but nothing more.
I did, however, find something similar from September last year in an “Axolotls Lovers” [sic] group on Facebook.
Hi. My son recently rescued a axolotl from a river near us. Being the uk waters and fast flowing waters she must have had a really bad time and lucky my son found her. I managed to quickly get a tank together for her and shes setting well i think lol. I have done alot of research and hope im doing things right for her. Any tips on helping her gain weight as she was very skinny and help her grow her fluffy gills again?also finding it straige she has no black dots in her eyes they are see through. She obviously had a very stressful time being dumped in a river. Any information il need to know would be a massive help.
A few seconds of searching for the author’s name led to their Instagram account with a video of the axolotl.
So … is it really “the first documented discovery of the species in the wild in the UK”? (And do BBC journalists actually go beyond merely repeating what they’re told?)
An interesting detail is that this other person also appears to live in or near Cardiff: they are pictured wearing University of South Wales/Prifysgol De Cymru scrubs and talk about visiting Clearwell Farm. This raises the possibility that there are more axolotls living wild in south Wales, and perhaps even that they can survive over the winter!
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Week 276: Back to reality
After a holiday that was busy, full of new places and experiences, but also very relaxing, going back to sitting in front of a computer all day has been a difficult adjustment.
Week 275: From Athens back to London
Our journey back home started well. We reversed our steps: train to Kiato; bus to Patras; taxi to the port; overnight ferry to Bari. This time, we were on the Superfast I, the twin sister of the vessel of the we’d taken on our outbound voyage, and we even had the same room, identical except for tiny things like the placement of a few electrical sockets.
Week 274: London to Athens via Rome (and a few other places)
The London Okinawa Sanshinkai was invited to perform at Japan Festival Greece in Athens on the Easter weekend – our Easter, that is; Orthodox Easter as celebrated in Greece falls a week later this year – and I decided to take part. L— and I chose to make a proper holiday of it: rather than flying to Athens, we’d take the long route by train and ferry, and stop off at some other places along the way. The itinerary, travel, and hotels were all organised by Byway, who we used to arrange our trip to the Basque country last year, using their concierge service. It wasn’t cheap, but it wasn’t all that expensive either, considering that it included travel, hotels, and first class upgrades on most of the train journeys. It was also very easy and almost certainly cheaper than the nightmare of administration that booking it ourselves would have been.
Week 273: Ill communication
I spent the whole week with a horrible cold. My nose kept running. My throat hurt. But the worst part was the lack of sleep: I slept fitfully and not very much. Four hours on Wednesday night felt like a luxury by comparison to the preceding days, and it wasn’t until about Friday that I felt actually rested.
Older entries can be found in the archive.