Liam & Annalise: Traveling Natural History Program at Chewonki
We pull up at the Traveling Natural History program at Chewonki. It is Wednesday, February 20th, about nine-thirty in the morning. We walk into a well kept building and sign in at the front desk. Kyle, an educator with the TNHP who will be helping us, leads us back to a bright, warm, humid room where there are all sorts of reptile cages. Kyle says that first, we are going to bring Peepers the 22-year-old mallard duck to his outdoor enclosure. Mallard ducks usually live from three to seven years in the wild. And in captivity it’s usually around ten, because predators can’t eat them. The oldest living duck was about twenty-seven. Peepers is very well cared for at TNHP, and he is healthy at the age of twenty two. Because Peepers is so old, in the winter he spends the night inside, but during the day he is outside in his outdoor habitat. Peepers was rescued from an animal supply store when he was two weeks old. The person who had ordered him had forgotten to come pick him up.
We went back inside and got out some fruits and vegetables to prepare the turtles’ and lizards’ meal. Liam noticed that a carrot is good for a turtle but certain types of lettuce could make them very sick. To humans there isn’t much difference - they’re both vegetables, but to a turtle it matters.
Ganat was brought in because his owners could not feed him properly. He now has a permanent kink in his tail due to poor nutrition when he was young.
Then we gave the crickets food and water, and fed seven of them to the frog, who is eight years old. A leopard frog sometimes lives to be four or five in the wild though most of them die when they are tadpoles or young frogs, due to predators. There are records of a leopard frog living to be about ten in the wild!
It was very interesting to watch the frog catch the crickets with its tongue. The frog has to be put in a smaller container when it is eating crickets because it is so old and it is hard for it to catch them. In a large space the crickets can escape.
Then we went outside to take care of the owls. This involved scooping up droppings, pellets, and half-eaten mice. We both thought it was really cool to be so close to such mythical creatures.
