Helping at my first Reptile Education presentation today

Norm66 · 03-23-12, 10:23 AM

My friend Shannon who runs the Mid Ohio Valley Reptile House (from whom we adopted Sidney and Malaki) is doing a presentation in her home today for a group of home-schooled kids and some of their parents. She's done these both through her own organization and through her school's herp department but it'll be a first for me. I'll be handling the animals and keeping the kids from getting tagged (though her animals are all really good I'll still be careful) and hopefully answering some questions.

Honestly I'm pretty excited about it. It should be fun. Hopefully I'll be able to get some pics to post but I might be too busy.

Swany · 03-23-12, 10:31 AM

Thats great Norm. Hope everyone has a fun time ;-)

Strutter769 · 03-23-12, 11:02 AM

Way to go, Norm! That's awesome and very exciting! Let us know how it goes. What age group? I'm curious to know the questions they ask too. That might help some of us plan for our presentations. What types of animals are you showing?

alessia55 · 03-23-12, 11:03 AM

Woot! What ages will the audience be? Will you get pics?

Terranaut · 03-23-12, 11:21 AM

Awesome. I have taken our snakes to the kids school before and the kids loved it. Have fun. The kids sure will and will walk away all the wiser.

Norm66 · 03-23-12, 11:33 AM

The kids will be 7-14. She has ball, burmese, and children's pythons, BCI and sand boas, kings, corns, etc. plus a Sav, a blue-something tegu and some other lzard I never remember. Oh, and Dundee the alligator and George the tortise.

Not sure if I'll have a chance to get any pics. I hope so. Just getting ready to head over in a few minutes, I'll post about it later on when I get home.

Gungirl · 03-23-12, 11:34 AM

good luck, I hope you have fun!

**millertime89** · 03-23-12, 12:07 PM

Good luck! I'm helping out a birthday next weekend, just wish he had a big snake to show to the kids.

exwizard · 03-23-12, 03:18 PM

That is great and it sounds like a lot of fun.

Norm66 · 03-23-12, 05:29 PM

Well that went extremely well. And man it was fun. Turned out to be only 5 kids and 3 parents which was a perfect group for Shannon's reptile room. We could have had a few more kids but it was fine.

We let the kids wander around oohing and awing at the animals in their enclosures for a while then sat everybody down. Then Shannon talked about each animal as I got it out and took it around to all the folks to let them see it up close and touch/pet them. I carefully kept all the heads away from young fingers. I did manage to get myself tagged by the relatively new chocolate striped kingsnake named Tyson. He hit me 4 or 5 times with no warning. He didn't even break the skin though. And he was good through being brought around the group once he got it out of his system. LOL.

We ended by getting the typical picture of the kids all lined up holding Merlin, the big albino burm all stretched out. Then we got a solo picture of each kid with Merlin. One of the moms had a nice camera and is posting pics to share with us hopefully this evening. I'll post them as soon as I get them.

All in all it was a great time and the group was already talking about having us do some more presentations for some other folks they know. And to make matters better the mom with the camera is also a tattoo artist and you know who likes tattoos? Yea, Norm does.

Just checked Facebook and one of the moms posted thanks and that we had sparked the little ones imaginations and that they haven't talked about anything but snakes, lizards and turtles since.

Strutter769 · 03-23-12, 05:32 PM

"Sounds" like an awesome day Norm! I bet it was a ton of fun with such a small crowd. Congratulations! Great job!

**I want to clarify - I put "sounds" in quotes because when you read something, you don't hear it. That means it didn't "sound" like anything! Just a peeve of mine. That used to drive me CRAZY at work! Ok, sorry to rant.

Swany · 03-23-12, 05:38 PM

Superb :-). Glad everyone had a ball Norm. Theres nothing better than seeing wonder in a child's eyes.

Norm66 · 03-24-12, 08:06 AM

Here are some pics from yesterday.

This is Tyson, the chocolate striped kingsnake. He'd bit me 4 times just minutes before this, but he calmed down really well.

With Dozer, the Sav. I fear he's not doing well.

And the group with Merlin, the two year old Burm. That's Shannon's daughter on the left. One of the kids is missing in this shot for some reason. The boy in the middle is autistic and seemed to have a really good time. The only trouble we had with him was that he tried sticking his fingers in between the tortoise's body and shell. He thought there should be a gap there for some reason. But he really did well other than that. He kept saying the snakes felt like rubber-coated animatronics. LOL

As I said it was a very fun and rewarding experience and one I hope to repeat often.

alessia55 · 03-24-12, 09:00 AM

So glad to hear it worked out so well! Looks like everyone involved had a good time

KORBIN5895 · 03-24-12, 09:14 AM

Awesome! What's wrong with Dozer?