Last week Marianne from Audubon Ark came to the library and ran a program on Habitats, with featured guests Painted Turtle and Skunk.  As expected, the program was terrific.  (For those of you who are children’s librarians in Massachusetts, if you haven’t had an Audubon Ark program at your library, you should: they are of the highest quality AND they are affordable.)

Marianne is a great teacher naturalist, and I was really impressed by her ability to both present information and listen to the kids.  She took her time, and allowed each child who wanted to speak to do so at his or her own speed.  When a child was finished commenting or asking a question, Marianne was able to be spontaneous and adapt her presentation to accomodate the specific interests of the kids in attendance. 

As with last summer’s Birds of Prey program, I was also very impressed by the matter-of-fact nature of these Audubon Ark programs.  The teacher naturalists cover all aspects of the animals that they have brought with them, from birth to death to reproduction.  Skulls of dead animals (in this case, a skunk) are shown to the kids, skins and shells are passed around for the kids to examine (at this program, two painted turtle shells and a skunk pelt were shared), and questions about reproduction are handled without drama (Marianne explained that you can tell a female painted turtle from a male by the shape of the turtle’s belly: a female’s belly is flat, a male’s is concave so that the male can mate with the female).  This last point is particularly of interest to me, since Marianne addressed that delicate subject of mating without raising a single parental eyebrow.  She didn’t ignore the issue, yet she also didn’t dwell upon it.  Mating exists, she mentioned it, done, move on.  Death exists, too, as evidenced by the skulls and pelts, but is handled in such a way that kids aren’t grossed out (or freaked out) by it. 

Obviously, Marianne was fabulous, and I hope that she is able to run our August program on Backyard Wildlife.  But the real star of last week was the skunk.  Mr. Skunk was one cool dude, as he wandered around his plexi-glass corral and snuffled through the leaves in search of his cat kibbles.  The kids got to sit in a ring around the corral, right up next to the skunk, but the skunk could have cared less about the circle of small faces surrounding him.  He’s obviously used to life in the public eye, and his primary objective was to find his afternoon snack. 

My thanks to Marianne, the turtle, and the skunk for a great afternoon.  I can’t wait until August’s program and the visit from the opossum!!