we went for a hike in the NC mountains a couple weeks ago, and this little fellow decided to cross the path in front of my wife. I have never seen a lizard colored like this from head to tail. He sure was a pretty thing.
This. They are fairly common here in the mountains. The adults are aquatic, green with red spots, and live in ponds and bogs. They go through a gilled aquatic larval stage, then morph into the red eft stage and live on land for awhile, before becoming aquatic again in the adult stage. They are pretty interesting little critters.