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They’re elusive as Bigfoot, these big, slimy salamanders.

You can lift hundreds of rocks, using an old lumberjack tool, and watch divers in wet suits plunge into a mountain creek, sweep their hands across the bottom and come up with nothing.

You do it over and over, for hours and hours. Wade into mountain creeks and streams, slog along snail-like and catch onlookers on the banks taking pictures, pointing and yelling down, “What y’all doing? Looking for bodies?’’

You’re wet. You’re tired. And when you use that rock-turning tool known as a peavey, you realize real quick why aspirin was invented. Your shoulders, they ache.

And you begin to wonder, “Do these things really exist?’’

Then you see it. The money rock, long and flat.

You lift, hear the garbled holler and see a masked woman in a wet suit surface with the ugliest thing you ever saw — a four-legged eel with mud-brown skin that feels so slick, so slimy, you touch it and squeal, “Eeeeeeew!’’

Yeah. Yuck.

These critters are long, sometimes more than 2 feet long. And scary — so scary some say its name comes from Dante’s “Divine Comedy’’ because its jaws were believed to be strong enough to bend the gates of hell.

Or that it’s so ugly, it must be “bent for hell.’’

It’s the hellbender.

In this case, it’s the Eastern hellbender, the largest salamander in North America that has become, according to some biologists, the equivalent of an amphibian canary in our environmental coal mine.

The hellbender tells us how we’re doing in our corner of Earth, particularly with drinking water. The logic is this: If hellbenders are healthy, so is our drinking water. If hellbenders aren’t healthy or can’t be found, we may need to worry.

Now, here’s where North Carolina comes into play. The creeks and streams twisting in and around the Blue Ridge Mountains are thought to contain the country’s largest concentration of hellbenders.

John Groves of the N.C. Zoo saw the need for data to help educate North Carolina about the need for the Eastern hellbender and find ways to protect a species that was vanishing from waterways nationwide.

Three years ago, he and others began wading into streams and creeks, toting peaveys and lifting rocks to find that elusive, slimy, ugly salamander.

They’ve become North Carolina’s hellbender hunters.

They’re scientists like Groves and Lori Williams, and volunteers like naturalist Jesse Pope, Greensboro librarian Kelly Prewett and Asheboro native Worth Pugh, a senior at Appalachian State University majoring in environmental biology.

“To me, it’s like Christmas,’’ says Williams, a wildlife biologist for the N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission, of finding a hellbender. “It’s like the best gift ever. You can search and search, and when you do find one, it’s an incredibly exciting day.

“And you’re doing something for that animal. You’re getting information that can protect them and our environment,’’ she says. “But when you find the big ones you find, you think, 'Can a salamander really get that big?’ ’’

Their size will scare you. Pope knows that.

He was 8 or 9, fishing with his father in the New River when he landed a catfish, a really big catfish. Or so he thought. He brought it to land. That’s when he saw it. The thing had legs.

“Oh, you caught a water dog,’’ his neighbor told him.

Today, at age 29, Pope works as chief naturalist at Grandfather Mountain. And these days, when he has the chance, he walks the streams near his professional playground searching for the water dog he remembers.

“You look at other salamanders, and they’re 3 or 4 inches long, but you see one like this, and it makes a massive impression,’’ Pope says. “It’s so cryptic. It’s like searching for Bigfoot because you can cruise hundreds of streams before you find one.’’

It’s a treasure hunt. Just ask Groves, the curator of the amphibians and reptiles at the N.C. Zoo.

With private grants and money from the N.C. Zoological Society, Groves has become the amphibian version of Indiana Jones. From May to late August every year, with a backpack loaded with equipment, he tracks the big salamander.

“There are at least 3,000 creeks and streams in the mountains, and we won’t cover them all,’’ Groves says. “But we’ll get to as much as we can.’’

Go along, and you turn into a detective. You spend hours on one meandering stream, turning over almost every rock, particularly the big, flat ones that weigh a few hundred pounds, heavier than a baby elephant.

Sometimes you feel like a ballet dancer on a greased log, teetering as you step from rock to rock, many covered with slick silt, the tell-tale sign of erosion and development.

Sometimes you tumble and realize right away that rocks can be blunt razors and creeks can be deceptively deep.

And the whole time, you listen for what Groves calls “snorkel talk.’’ That’s the muffled voice through a rubber mouthpiece, the words from a diver that mean much — from “I’m in’’ to “Clear’’ to the one you’re waiting for: “Hellbender!’’

When you hear that, you know you’ve gotten lucky. Prewett did.

After nearly six hours of searching in two streams earlier this month, she discovered an Eastern hellbender that was 22 inches long. It was her first.

“As soon as I touched it, I knew what it was,’’ said Prewett, a librarian at the Hemphill Branch of the Greensboro Public Library. “It felt like satin. I felt it twice, and the second time, I knew. You’re supposed to say, 'Hellbender!’ when you find one. But all I could say was 'Oooooooooooooo!’’’

When you find an Eastern hellbender, everything stops. Groves sits on a rock, pulls everything from his backpack and goes old-school — writing down everything, including the gender, length and weight and the exact location of the rock.

Then, after 20 minutes or so, you move on to the next rock — and the next exclamation from someone in a mask.

It’s nitty-gritty science, a joint venture between the zoo and the N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission. After 15 trips since May 2007, Groves and Williams have found at least 100 Eastern hellbenders.

Their team of volunteers has helped persuade state officials to improve the distinction of the Big Laurel River in Madison County and call it an outstanding water resource in North Carolina.

The reason: To help protect its hellbender population and the river when new construction is considered.

Meanwhile, they’ve found more hellbenders the farther west they go. What that means is this: Development in North Carolina’s eastern mountains and foothills could be driving them away.

Groves knows more work needs to be done. He wants to carry out surveys every spring and summer for the next seven years. He wants more data. But more important, he wants to see a change.

He remembers the canoeists last month on the New River. They saw Groves and his crew of hellbender hunters and yelled, “Catch these things! Take ’em all!’’

People do get scared. They’ve seen these big, ugly, slimy salamanders on the other end of the hook or in the water and they’ve been known to crush the hellbender’s head with a rock.

Today, it’s more about indifference than fear.

Talk to Groves and Williams about that — over a cup of coffee before a day of combing a creek outside Boone — and they both go on about what they see.

They see our environment as one huge jigsaw puzzle, in which each animal, each fish, each bird, each amphibian represents one small yet crucial piece. And they both wonder how our environment can remain sustainable if pieces, crucial pieces, continue to be lost.

Yet, at 61, the son of a zoo curator, Groves knows change can happen. He has been involved with zoos professionally for more than four decades. He mentions what the Audubon Society did.

Back in the 1940s, the nonprofit began a campaign to change how people thought of hawks and owls. Once killed, now they’re protected. The same can be done for the Eastern hellbender.

“You have to make people feel like it’s theirs,’’ Groves says.

“In other words, you own the land, but you don’t own the deer. We’re all responsible.’’

Contact Jeri Rowe at 373-7374 or jeri.rowe@news-record.com.