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Homewood’s iconic Salamander Festival is returning in 2025 with the Friends of Shades Creek and a new special guest.
The event, set for Jan. 25 in Homewood High School’s gymnasium, celebrates the salamanders that call Homewood their home. The festival is intended to educate people on salamanders and spread conservation information in a fun way.
This year, there will even be a special visit from Norman the Tiger salamander, a rare and protected type of mole salamander that was found by two Leeds treatment plant employees who saved him from the shredder.
“We will definitely have live salamanders, so that's always a given,” said Michelle Blackwood, the president of Friends of Shades Creek. “And we'll have some other animals there for them to look at.”
While there are eight or nine different species of salamander that live in the old growth forest near Lakeshore Drive, the spotted salamander is the most well-known. The salamanders live under rocks and logs during the year, but during a warm, rainy night, usually at the end of January, they migrate to local ponds to mate. The amphibians cross South Lakeshore just east of Homewood High School.
The Friends of Shades Creek will often not only watch the migration but also protect the salamanders’ path to the pond, sometimes even closing the road, with permission from the city, on nights they expect migration.
Once at the pond, the male salamanders will perform a mating dance, and the females will later lay their eggs in the pond. The new salamanders will hatch about a week or two later, Blackwood said.
And since the salamanders dance, Blackwood said the group always tries to have dancing at the festival. There will also be arts and crafts and educational information from several local and regional conservation and nature organizations. Blackwood said many groups also bring their own activities to engage with festival goers.
“Salamanders, arts and crafts for kids to make displays with, fish, frogs, turtles, crayfish, fossils, trees, microscopes,” Blackwood said. “We'll definitely have Ruffner Mountain birds or animals. I think they're bringing birds and animals, a balloon man and I've already talked with [the vendor] about recycling information.”
There will also be live music by The Swinging Slythereens, who change the words of popular songs to make them about salamanders. A nature hike to the mating pools will also take place at 1 p.m.
The Salamander Story will also be told during the event, detailing to attendees how the Friends of Shades Creek came across the salamanders through their efforts to conserve the old growth forest and how the festival came to be.
The event will run from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. and is free and open to the public. For more information, visit shadescreek.org.
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