Reptiles at Risk

Day 12: Woes in Montreal...

Posted by Jeff Hathaway on July 30, 2007 at 3:04 PM

Not the greatest day!!! It all started off with rising early to try to beat traffic from downtown Montreal out to Vaudreuil. We discovered that Dan’s apartment keys were missing, which may have been our fault. They were found after a half hour search for them, and it wasn’t our fault after all.

Eragon (the van) was the next problem that popped up, as he’s been giving us a lot of trouble lately. We’ve decided to get a bit of work done on it, in hopes of curing the troubles.

Thankfully, both the show in Vaudreuil, and on Ile Perrot (where various reptile species can be found) went well. I’m always amazed by how many people get over their fear of snakes, and touch or hold a snake by the end of the show. It really gives me hope that what we’re doing is making a big impact on how people see reptiles. If these terrified people realize that, hey, snakes aren’t so bad, maybe I shouldn’t kill them, that’s amazing.

Our next show was in Park Mont-Orford (Jeff and the girls were glad to be out of Montreal traffic) and I have to admit, I was glad to be done navigating. The show went really well, and some of the curious park staff stopped by after to check out the snakes. A few of the animal talks have been adapted for Quebec, as you don’t find some of the species here (like black rat snake, or hognose…).

Although Mont-Orford was a BEAUTIFUL park, full of cool stuff (like a great blue heron rookerie- I’ve never seen one before), we decided to stay at my other grandparents’ house in Magog. Lucky I have so many nice relatives in Quebec! We had internet access, and did a few loads of laundry, but mostly we were so tired that we just fell asleep.

Sarah Jane