When I got it off, it was shallow, but it was bleeding everywhere.

And inevitably, as soon as that was happening, the school group shows up.

Hey, welcome to the show.

The University of Florida news account sent me a tweet the other day, weirdly, asking me to talk about getting bit by salamanders with their expert,

Kirsten Hecht, also known as Kirsten Hechtbender, or Kirsten the Hellbender, heckt,

which is my personal favorite because I made it up, and it's kind of like a fighter's nickname.

I'm a firm believer that all scientists should,

ideally, have cool nicknames. Hellbender makes her sound intimidating. She's actually a very nice

woman. She's a PhD candidate. She's been studying salamanders for 15 years. She's a full-time

scientist, a herpetologist, an active conservation advocate, the founder of giant salamanders.org,

a board member of the foundation for the conservation of salamanders.

I'm running out of music.

So let's begin.

I hope you enjoy.

So I'm going to start today with the same thing that UF News started with.

And I'm going to ask you, what's the worst salamander bite you've ever gotten?

So luckily, I haven't had too many salamander bites.

But the funny story with this one is, um, one summer I was affiliated with an environmental education institute and so I got to be part of

their camps and things and bring kids out to go look for hellbenders in the stream and it was the

best thing ever it was really fun but usually you know when you bring animals or have kids look for animals, one of the first questions you're inevitably going to get is, does it bite?

And so, helpiners can bite. I mean, any salamander really can bite. Some are more notorious for it than others, but I hadn't been bitten at all.

And so it was usually always the can sort of, oh, they can bite, but, you know, they usually

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