Last week I was on the last leg of my usual three-peninsula bicycle ride. Every now and then, I turned my gaze away from the spectacular ocean scenery and looked down at the road ahead. On one of those glances, I saw a small orange, noodlelike object that seemed to move. I braked and pedaled back, and I was surprised to find it was a salamander. I had not seen an orange salamander in nearly 60 years.

There are several reasons for that 6-decade gap. First, as I approached adolescence, I spent increasingly less time poking around in the woods and along the stream beds around my home, natural habitats for salamanders. However, after I finished my training and was a few years into practice, I returned to a woodsier lifestyle, and I spent hours on my hands and knees gardening in what should have been amphibian- and reptilian-friendly environs. I occasionally saw a toad, but never a salamander. While I had been metamorphing into an adult physician, the amphibians had been suffering a serious global decline, the causes of which are still largely unknown and hotly debated.

As I continued on my ride home, my mind drifted back to my childhood and my life with reptiles and amphibians. I spent hours on solitary forays along the streams and ponds in our neighborhood, collecting specimens. Most of my buddies were doing the same. There were tadpoles in Mason jars, toads in an old cracked aquarium I got from the neighbors, and turtles in cardboard boxes and discarded dishpans. Snakes were more of a challenge to catch and house, but every now and then I got lucky. None of the inhabitants of my menagerie ever made it into our house. My mother had a few, but sensible, rules.

These animals weren’t pets. Dog and cats were pets. Amphibians and reptiles were curiosities to be observed and studied, not stroked or petted. Those that survived their brief captivities were returned to the wild.

One could buy small turtles at the pet store. At the circus, there were racks of small perforated cellophane bags for sale, in which small lizards and chameleon were encased. Even as I child I knew those poor little captives were never going to survive for long after their car ride home. No, my friends and I were into wild specimens, caught for scientific study. Although there has been a surge of health warnings about the health risks from handling reptiles and amphibians, none of us ever got salmonella poisoning. Granted, our sample size was small, but our exposure was extensive.

When I arrived home from my ride, I decided to review the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warnings, and to look a little bit more deeply into the real risks that we had survived from our amphibian and reptilian encounters. The CDC website list of cautions and recommendations are for the most part reasonable ... and not much different from my mother’s house rules and requirements for basic hygiene.

However, I was troubled by one warning that "children younger than 5 years old ... should not handle or touch reptiles, or anything in the area where they live and roam." If my parents had followed this recommendation, they would have set me down me in front of the television and never let me play outside. No more stream side exploring, no more turning over rocks and old logs, no more building fairy houses in the mossy woods.

No distinction is made in the CDC warnings between wild and captive animals. In the little research I could find on the subject, it turns out that wild reptiles are less likely to carry and shed salmonella. A study of red-sliders, a common pet store turtle with a long rap sheet of salmonella outbreaks, could find no salmonella in the wild specimens tested. Another study found that the tadpoles they cultured had no salmonella. One author postulated that the stress of captivity renders reptiles and amphibians more vulnerable to infection, as it has been found to do in other animals.

So it turns out that, as usual, my mother was correct. Go out and explore. Don’t buy at the pet store. Don’t bring ’em into the house. Sadly, even if we are successful in getting kids off the couch and into the woods, they will be less likely to find reptiles and amphibians when they go exploring. But, I am a hopeful guy. Maybe the little orange salamander I saw is the vanguard of an amphibian return.

Dr. Wilkoff practiced primary care pediatrics in Brunswick, Maine, for nearly 40 years. He has authored several books on behavioral pediatrics including "How to Say No to Your Toddler." E-mail him at pdnews@frontlinemedcom.com.

Return of the Wild?