In which I need help to rescue a tiny amphibian.

I am now a real estate magnate. Not only do I own a sweet little post-Victorian home in the university district, I also own a mold-free big little house in the woods. Angry Kid and I kicked around the empty house in the woods for an hour or so this evening waiting for the guy from the home security company to come by and give us an estimate on switching from the execrable ADT to another (local, independent) company. Unfortunately, he never showed.

We had a lovely time running back and forth through the empty house, finding all kinds of little treasures the previous owners left us. (A clock! Cooling racks! Toilet brushes!) We also spent some time in the cavernous basement, where we found it.

The basement is not dry. Even though the previous owners coated every wall with drylok as part of the mold abatement, there is still some water seeping under the footers. In the farthest, wettest corner of the basement, Angry Kid found some unhappy sowbugs and, snugged into the corner, a salamander no more than two inches long.

Here's where one or more of you biologists come in. The temperature has recently dropped from lovely and unseasonably warm to typical square-state winter (20F-30F). Wee salamander should be curled up sleeping somewhere outside. In my warm basement, I assume he will not sleep, but neither will he find food. What should I do? Should I take him outside into the cold? Leave him alone with the sowbugs? Tuck him under the plastic moisture barrier in the crawl space? Please help.

I lived in the woods as a kid, and the fragile salamanders were some of the loveliest mysteries of my childhood. While I am thrilled to find one in my basement, I am also heartbroken that my warm house might kill him. (Especially because my warm house is, by virtue of drylok and other mold abatement measures, no longer a friendly habitat for an amphibian.)