By GABRIELLE SHIOZAWA
Moapa Valley Progress
“Guys! Don’t touch the poop!”
That’s not exactly what you’re expecting to hear when you step inside the Moapa Valley Library, and it’s not something you normally do hear (thank goodness).
But this wasn’t any ordinary day at the library. Ranger Barbara Michel was there on Friday, Nov. 17 to give a crash-course presentation on local wildlife. With that presentation would come all kinds of mayhem that no one there was expecting (including, but not limited to, coyote poop).
Michel, who works for the national wildlife refuges in Moapa and Pahranagat, started out Friday’s program by reading “Desert Night, Desert Day.” The engaging story, written and illustrated by Anthony D. Fredericks and Ken Spengler, uses playful rhymes to tell how different desert animals live around the clock.
Once she had introduced the topic and piqued the kids’ curiosities, Michel led her audience into the library courtyard.
“Today,” the ranger told the kids, “we’re going to become nature detectives!”
Michel explained to her detectives that even if they couldn’t see actual animals, they could look for signs that the animals were once there.
The nature detectives eagerly crawled around, looking for clues. The first sign they came across was a set of rabbit tracks. Michel showed the kids how to hop around the way that rabbits do.
Next was a scattering of badger tracks. “You can identify badger tracks by looking at the direction they move in,” Michel explained. “They kind of move in a zigzag line.”
Fascination trumped disgust when it came to the next discovery: a pile of coyote scat. The kids found seeds in the scat and discussed the different foods that coyotes eat.
The detectives were particularly excited about the coyote skull they found. Led by Ranger Michel, the kids discussed the shape and size of the coyote’s teeth. Upon comparing them to their own teeth, the detectives decided that coyotes, like them, are omnivores.
The next specimen was a bird egg. But to which kind of bird did it belong? The kids took turns guessing. Did it belong to a chicken? A bluebird? A quail? It turned out that the tiny egg belonged to a hummingbird!
After discovering an owl pellet in the grass, the nature detectives sat down to dissect and examine owl pellets on their own. The children were excited by the project and enthusiastically tore the pellets open, revealing feathers, skulls, and delicate bones.
To end the activity, each of the kids crafted their own construction-paper owls with movable paper-plate wings.
Despite its brevity, the crash-course program left its participants with new information as well as heightened curiosity. They were able to explore without inhibition, to ask questions without fear of reproach, and they left the library all the better for it.
“There’s a sign in Moapa that says, ‘We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children,’” said Ranger Barbara Michel. “I think that’s a really good way of putting it. All of us are just temporary on the planet, so it’s important to instill a sense of wonder and a sense of goodwill to our earth. We have to take care of it.”
The Moapa Valley National Wildlife Refuge features programs for people of all ages. For more information, visit www.fws.gov/refuge/moapa_valley.
