It really is! I find them under flower pots, stones and mats of ground cover all the time. No idea what they eat or how they got there…
Oh, now that was cool! Thanks so much for that, tho I still have no idea how they could have ended up in our gardens. Eggs on plants we buy at the nursery?
I have found snakes near bridges over rivers. Look for holes in the soil near the concrete and rocks.
Salamanders can be found in this area by driving the roads between small ponds. They looks like a cigar with legs crossing the pavement. I kept one over the winter by feeding it nightcrawlers. He grew so big that I had to return him to the pond where I found him .
Here’s an interesting news story about a successful salamander search: Smallest Salamander Species in US Discovered in Georgia. It includes this bit, relevant to this thread:
It also reminds me that I once found some tiny aquatic salamanders under rocks in a stream in Tennessee. (I’m pretty sure they weren’t larvae, by the way; they looked fully mature.)