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WEEK of May 9, 2005 |
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Critters Invade Lower School by Jeffrey Stanley “My attitude is if I see a red, black and yellow snake I’m not getting any closer. If you touch one, chances are you will never touch it again.” Lower School guest speaker Eileen Jones sat before a group of enrapt third graders, a milk snake coiled around her arm. She was explaining nature’s process of mimicry to them, and the fact that this snake’s colors resembled those of the venomous coral snake. “Liar, liar, Pants On Fire (yes, that’s her name) has all the advantages without having to produce the venom.” Jones called to mind other examples for the students of creatures which are mostly defenseless and therefore find other ways to ward off predators. “Monarch butterflies. The caterpillar has to feed on milkweed. If they can’t, they will not be bitter tasting, and the birds will feed on them, so the milkweed is crucial to their survival. If something happens to the milkweed plants, what will happen to the monarchs?” Her point was clear—no more milkweed means no more monarch butterflies. “Nature is a jigsaw puzzle. If you remove one piece it affects the entire thing.” “Is that snake trained?” asked one curious student. “There’s only so much training you can do with a snake. I just have to be gentle with her so she has no reason to defend herself.” Eileen rose from her seat to return the snake to her habitat, a blue and white Coleman cooler. “Do you know why she travels in this?” The students were uncertain. Jones prodded them to think of possible reasons why a snake would enjoy hanging out in a cooler. She explained that unlike warm-blooded humans, whose bodies work to keep us at a constant 98.6 degrees regardless of our environment, snakes are cold-blooded. “What controls her body temperature? The air in the room she’s in.” Next, Jones knelt before a hefty animal carrier, donned work gloves and took out a leash. Surely she was about to bring out a dog, but to the students’ delight she produced a female barn owl named Jesse who struck a majestic pose on Jones wrist, occasionally extending her long wings. “With birds, if you want to know how they make a living, just check their feet,” said Jones, showing the class Jesse’s intimidating lower appendages. “She uses her talons, her sharp claws, to kill. And notice when she flaps her wings how quiet it is. Silent flight.” Jones explained that this advantage makes Jesse a master of the stealth attack. “Mice, small snakes, rabbits, maybe birds,” had better keep watching the skies when Jesse is around, explained Jones. Jones concluded her talk by producing a perennial favorite, a white, fluffy, well-fed cottontail rabbit named Harry Potter. “Harry is a perfect example of a prey animal,” said Jones of the docile critter snuggling in her lap. Jones explained that Harry had been thoroughly domesticated, and that his cousins in the wild would be half his size and much darker in color, except for the white on the bottom of the tail. This white patch, she told the class, serves the same purpose as the white patch on the bottom of a whitetail deer’s back side. When upraised as the animal retreats, the tail becomes a warning flag to others in the area that a predator is in their midst. Jones has been a wildlife rehabilitator for fifteen years and through her organization, City Beasts, she has been a wildlife educator for almost a decade. This was her second visit to BFS.
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