Fearlessly face to face
April Claus dangled a worm over the tank of her garter snake. The couple of dozen fourthand fifth-graders in front of her were rapt as the thin reptile lifted itself several inches up, almost to the top. Then, in a flash, it snatched the worm.
The kids gasped and squealed and laughed. “He stole it!” Ms. Claus complained.
The garter snake, like all but one of the toads and snakes and turtles Ms. Claus brought to Alcosan’s wastewater treatment plant on Tuesday, was native to Pennsylvania. That was the point of her presentation: To show Alcosan’s summer science campers what lived around them.
This is the 14th year Alcosan has held a camp and as usual, its June and July sections filled up quickly. In addition to meeting garter snakes, the kids take a tour of Alcosan’s facilities, build their own sewage system and design their own 3-D printed fish. The point, said director of communications Jeanne Clark, is to get the students interested in
science and to see how their actions affect the environment.
“It’s particularly to make them understand what’s involved in sewage, following their own flush and how different things impact that and how that works, to protect the source of drinking water,” she said.
Ms. Claus, who works at Fern Hollow Nature Center but does presentations like these on the side, has spoken at the camp for more than a decade. On Tuesday, she made sure the kids knew what a watershed was and the difference between warm- and cold-blooded animals. She told stories about her own encounters with wild animals, complete with sound effects.
As she brought out live animals, in tanks and in her hands, she shared facts about them. Venomous snakes’ heads are more triangular, and non-venomous snakes’ heads are more spoon-like. Salamanders can break off their tails if predators grab them. Some of those facts surprised the kids; for example, that snakes have backbones and male frogs sing “to get a girlfriend.”
As she spoke, the students passed around Ms. Claus’ tanks: a spring peeper frog with its giant vocal sac; an American toad, which could change color. Ms. Claus brought along a spotted salamander, which was probably 20 to 30 years old. She offered the garter snake a second worm; this time, she got its head to poke out the top of the tank before she let it grab the snack.
One camper, 10-year-old Alys Campbell from Woodland Hills Intermediate School, said her favorite part of camp so far was Monday’s tour of the plant — but the garter snake, rising out of its tank for the worm, was her favorite animal.
“I thought it was so cool how fast it could go,” she said.
The snake was too fast, in fact, to let the kids hold, but Ms. Claus let them handle a milk snake, which slithered harmlessly around the children’s hands, flicking its tongue.
Peppered into the presentation were tips on how to keep animals safe: if you need to move a turtle off the road, grab it under the back part of its shell. Don’t take a frog out of the water, it can dry up and die.
Ms. Claus’ goal, she said, was to make kids more familiar and comfortable with nature.
“You can’t ask kids to save the Earth if they don’t love the Earth,” she said.