Dr. Carlos Camp Shares Stories of Salamanders, Scares, and Late-Night Rescues

Inspiring a Student

Cooper Kework was a student in my General Biology class. I didn’t know him well, but I knew he was a tennis player who took his academic studies seriously. I happened to be in a department meeting when a fellow faculty member mentioned that a tennis player named Cooper was thinking about transferring. My ears perked up, and I immediately responded, “What? Cooper Kework?”

After my next class I pulled Cooper into my office and asked what his major was, what his future plans were, and other things of that general nature. He said he was on the tennis team but was hurt and couldn’t play. He also was considering transferring to Georgia College in Milledgeville where his sister was in school. I realized that he had not found a place to really plug in at Piedmont. I told him that I was looking for a good student to fill a spot in my research group, to specifically work on a project that I had in mind dealing with salamander ecology. I also mentioned the advantages of a biology major. Then I told him to go home, think about what he would be gaining by leaving, what he would be losing by leaving, and then decide on what he wanted to do.

The next day, he went to his advisor and said that he was changing his major to biology and that he wanted to be part of my research group. We ended up publishing the research from that project, and I have co-authored two additional publications with him. In addition, I was able to take him to four scientific conferences, including an international conference on salamander biology. In 2023, he was Piedmont’s valedictorian. This year, he finished his Master of Science at Kennesaw State University, working, not surprisingly, on salamander ecology. This fall, he is entering a PhD program at Florida State University in exercise physiology, which is really his first love.

I like to think that I have had a positive influence on a number of students over the years, and there are a lot of them that I am fiercely proud of. However, there are none that I’m prouder of than Cooper.

A Night on the Water

Years ago, there was a Laotian student, Chanthala, who majored in biology. He was young when Laos fell to communism, and he ended up as a refugee to the United States. At the time, he was taking a course I was teaching in ecology. As part of the course, we took a field trip to Lake Blackshear down in South Georgia, where we camped at Georgia Veterans Memorial State Park. As many lakes do in that part of the country, Lake Blackshear housed a decent population of alligators. However, these animals were shy and could rarely be seen in the daytime. At night, on the other hand, you could easily spot them because their eyes reflect red when shined with the beam of a flashlight. You could only view the small ones from the shore, however, because the big ones remained several hundred yards away, hidden behind a line of cypress trees.

On this particular trip, we carried two rubber rafts, and the more adventurous students, including Chanthala, were eager to go shine the big gators. Unfortunately, there were too many of us for the rafts, even when they were overloaded with one or two students more than the manufacturer recommended. As a result, a single student and I stayed on shore while the tiny flotilla, filled with eager, and I suspect somewhat anxious crews, paddled its way slowly toward the cypress trees.

Eventually, the rafts disappeared in the line of trees, but we could easily follow their progress by the beams of the numerous flashlights that constantly swept the area amid and beyond the trees. We could also occasionally hear the distant but undecipherable chatter coming from the students. Suddenly, we heard Chanthala’s unmistakable voice, which tended to go shrill when he was excited, shriek, “It’s LEAKING! It’s LEAKING!”

What we learned later was that, just as they had come within sight of the big gators, someone shifted, and their foot uncorked the intake valve of the air-filled floor of the raft. The sound of the rushing air from the raft had convinced those aboard that the vital part of raft itself had sprung a leak, and they were about to go down while surrounded by some very large predators, as indicated by Chanthala’s terror-filled proclamation. Fortunately, everyone returned safely, having experienced a bit of nature that they otherwise would have only gotten through film, television, or photos. Following his graduation, Chanthala joined the U.S. Army and legally changed his name to Brian as a sign of deep gratitude and respect for this country.

A Midnight Rescue

Noah Irwin joined my research group as a sophomore, and together we spent a number of nights in the mountains collecting salamanders for his project. As amphibians, salamanders require moisture, and they are most active during the rain. Well, the best rain event we had during Noah’s stay at Piedmont was Hurricane Ida, whose southern edge crossed Georgia’s mountains. In retrospect, it might have not been the wisest decision, but we took advantage of the wet night and headed to Sosebee Cove, a salamander-rich area at approximately 3600 feet in elevation in Union County.

Although Ida had been downgraded to a tropical storm by that time, the night was truly a thing to behold. Small streams had turned into cataracts, and newly downed trees were not uncommon across the landscape. When we reached the Cove, we headed to a little seepage area, where I expected to see our target salamanders fully active on the surface. Much to my surprise and disappointment, however, I saw none. Then I happened to look up into a bush, and at the level of my eye, an Ocoee Salamander was resting on a branch. I had read about salamanders going up into the trees in the Great Smoky Mountains under rainy conditions but had never seen it until this night. They were on branches in bushes and climbing trunks of trees, some as high as the furthest extent of the beams of our flashlights. They had clearly come from the seepage because, the further we moved away from it, the fewer salamanders we saw.

As thrilling as the experience was for a couple of salamander biologists, the night was far from over. As we were driving down Hwy 180 towards Vogel State Park, Noah suddenly yelled, “TREE!” Sure enough, a large tree had fallen across the highway, blocking our route home. I told him that the only other way was to cross over to the mountain town of Suches and then travel down Hwy 60. I knew that the chance of making through all those winding, mountain roads in the midst of the still howling storm without facing another tree over the road was remote and it was highly likely that we would be sleeping in my truck.

Sometimes, luck is with you, however, and as we descended on the other side of Bear Gap, we met a Georgia Department of Transportation (DOT) truck, completely equipped with a scraper blade on its front, out clearing the roads. I flagged him down and told him about the tree blocking the highway. The DOT worker answered with all of the distinctive enunciation of Gabby Johnson, the rustic pioneer in the Mel Brooks classic movie “Blazing Saddles.”

We followed “Gabby” to the tree and waited as he cut it up and then pushed it off the road. But the storm, not to be outdone, had laid yet another tree across the road not 50 yards from the first one. Needless to say, it was well past midnight by time we got out onto Hwy 129 and on our way home.

We collected over 80 salamanders that night by simply brushing them off into plastic bags. After we measured them in the lab, we returned them to their home in the wet seepage area. Noah and I finished his project, and he was able to present the results at several scientific conferences, including an international conference on the biology of salamanders. We also published the results in a leading herpetological journal. Noah went on to earn his Master of Science at the University of Southeastern Louisiana, working, of course, on a project in salamander ecology.