Reptiles at Risk

A New Experience.... by Jenny

Posted by Jeff Hathaway on December 22, 2007 at 10:37 PM

As the designated animal care person at the centre I am usually left at home while the Reptiles at Risk on the Road gang head off to the far reaches of Ontario. For a change, due to the absence of Crystal for Christmas holidays, I was recruited to assist with the programs. We
headed up North very early in the morning (loading anmials at 5:30am, good thing reptiles are very forgiving of these strange hours) to reach our first school in Britt. A lovely small school, we did a presentation for all the grades, Kindergarten to grade 8. These children routinely see Eastern Fox Snakes, Massasauga Rattlesnakes, and have had Five Lined Skinks running through the halls of their school! The sixty children were very receptive to the hands-on, and I believe every child participated by at least touching some of our fantastic working animals.

Our next stop was North Monetville. To get there we had to drive through Monetville, continue on the highway to get to North Monetville to perform at Monetville Public School (Not North Monetville Public School). I was a little confused. Despite the confusion we arrived in plenty of time and again presented to the whole school. The hands-on sessions were successful, and although it was new to me to have the older children standing when they were playing with the snakes they were wonderfully responsible and no participants were harmed in the making of this wonderful experience.

This particular set of shows were for only one day, and not too far from home, so I did not have a chance to participate in the truly 'on the road' style of Reptiles at Risk on the Road programs. Instead of a hotel and restaurant dinner we drove home, put animals away and then I worked on our collection of hatchling snakes, so you may be able to take the animal care person out of the house, but you can't take the animal care out of the person!

This was a wonderful experience, and I would like to thank the super schools, terrific teachers and stellar students that made it a memorable day for me.

Jenny

A catch up week...

Posted by Jeff Hathaway on December 13, 2007 at 12:42 AM

This week, we're trying to fit in schools that we couldn't accommodate in our schedule previously, and one that we had to cancel due to bad weather last week. We're also hoping to fit in a CBC interview in Windsor while passing through. Our pre-Christmas program schedule is winding down, with only a couple of schools next week up near the French River. We're looking forward to a little more downtime over the school holiday break, so we can get caught up on some other stuff!