Reptiles at Risk

Day 13: The Christmas surprise

Posted by Jeff Hathaway on July 30, 2007 at 3:26 PM

Arriving at the Magog community center, it became apparent with the lack of children that the daycamp we were supposed to be doing a show for had forgotten that we were coming. After a quick trip down to the beach, where the daycampers were celebrating "Christmas in July", the instructors surprised the kids with a special "christmas present"- a presentation on reptiles! We thought it was a smooth cover up move. The kids loved it too!

The next show we had was at Yamaska Provincial Park, where we met with some reservations from the park staff about letting people hold the snakes, for fear that the park visitors would want to catch the wild inhabitants of the park. However, we believe that touching the snakes is an important part of the program, since it really helps get people over their fears. So during the show, it was stressed that the wild snakes in the park were to be observed only, not touched (a Quebec park rule), and we compromised with the people touching the snakes in the second part of the show while we held them.