Today was my first time taking animals out to a school, and I'll need to observe several times before talking about the animals myself. The kids were really cute, so excited to see the critters, although 5-year olds don't have a very long attention span. When the lead volunteer, Margy, brought out the echidna, she asked the kids if any of them knew what kind of animal living in the Australian bush might want to hurt an echidna. The most popular answer with both groups of kids was either "lions" or "tigers," but my favorites from two little boys were "monsters" and "murderers." We had a hard time keeping a straight face with those answers.
Henry, the black cockatoo, decided he wanted to sit on my shoulder during the entire second session, and to keep him from squawking in my ear, I let him bite on my sweatshirt zipper, but surprisingly he didn't ruin it. The kids in the second group seemed much more hesitant about touching the animals than the first group were, and two of the little girls loudly announced they did not want to touch anything. Of course that was right after their teacher made an ugly grimace when we took the python out of its bag, so maybe the kids picked up on that. The Tawny Frogmouths sit so completely still during the daytime, that all the kids assumed this one was stuffed, until we took him off the perch and popped a tiny mouse into his mouth. Margy says the little kids get upset if the mice are big enough to actually tell they're mice, so we have to give them the really tiny ones.
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