York Town News
Students wowed by CFW animal visitors
By Melissa Wood
Third-grade students in Susan Albertini's and Gabe Gordon's classes were among those at Coastal Ridge Elementary School to meet Bianca the Barred Owl, a resident of the Center for Wildlife, last week. Bianca is pictured here, held by Kristen Lamb, who presented information with Amy Titcomb about the center and the animals they treat to the local students during multiple visits last week.
Photo by Melissa Wood
YORK - Have you ever met a turtle?
Rachel Stevenson once caught a snapping turtle. Marina Boston saw a painted turtle near her cousin's house. Marcus Byers helped a snapping turtle out off the street. A painted turtle had babies in the pond close to Shannon Todd's house, and Peyton Morse remembers her dad playing a joke with a painted turtle.
"He picked up a turtle, put it next to my mother and my mother screamed," she said.
The students in Susan Albertini's and Gabe Gordon's third grade classes described their many personal connections to animals and the new things they learned after a visit from Center for Wildlife on Friday, Jan.26.
Kristen Lamb and Amy Titcomb talked to students at Coastal Ridge Elementary School during several visits last week about the animals they treat at the center, and brought along some feathered and hard-shelled friends for the kids to meet.
The visits are part of the center's educational outreach program, which has as its goal to teach people about the center and the animals they help. The center provides care to small mammals, birds and reptiles that have been injured and need either permanent care or rehabilitation to return to the wild.
"We get a lot of turtles that are hit by cars," said Lamb.
She brought along Anna, a painted turtle, who had been someone's pet. Lamb said turtles don't make good pets for most people because they live a really, really long time. Box turtles, for instance, can live to be 80 to 100 years old.
Former pet turtles that come to the center cannot be let go into the wild because of their strong homing instincts. A turtle lays eggs in the same place - year, after year, after year - no matter how far away or how built-up the place may become.
That homing instinct gets turtles into trouble with cars because they often must cross busy roads to get to those spots. Lamb said the center gets calls from people who try to move turtles back off the road and then get frustrated when the turtle goes right back into the road. The center tells people that, as long as it is safe to do so, to help the turtles across the road in the direction they're going.
"You're never going to be able to change a turtle's mind," said Lamb.
When turtles who have been hit by cars are brought to the center, their shells can be mended, much like a person's broken bone would be mended. Instead of a cast, the center uses hooks, wire, and superglue to hold the shell together. Sometimes turtles come in with shells that have been repaired before.
"There are some tough turtles out there that can survive a lot," said Lamb.
Along with the turtles, Bianca the Barred Owl and Savannah, an American Kestral falcon, also made an appearance. Both birds are raptors, which also include eagles, hawks and osprey.
Malcom Hughes said he never knew that birds with curved beaks and talons, which they use for killing and eating their prey, were called raptors.
When Lamb brought out Bianca, she was able to dispel some myths and tell the kids some things they didn't know about owls.
For instance, owls cannot turn their heads all the way around, but they can turn them pretty far, a necessity since they cannot move their eyes from side to side. They can do this because they have 14 bones in their necks, compared to only seven in human beings.
"I thought it was really cool how owls have so many bones in the back of their necks," said third-grader Erin McCafferty.
Patrick Parenteau said he was surprised by how thick the owls' feathers were. Since owls don't migrate south they need a thick layer of feathers to stay warm in winter. Lamb demonstrated the thickness by poking her finger into the owl's feathers until she touched the skin, showing that the feathers were about one and a half inches thick.
Lamb also held out the owl's wing to show how the feathers are rounded and for the kids to feel how soft the feathers were. She explained that since owls are nocturnal, they need their movements to be silent in order to catch prey at night.
"When we go out to feed them, sometimes they fly right over our heads and we don't even hear them," said Lamb. "And then we know they're ready."
The CFW is celebrating the recent completion of raptor enclosure on Jan. 4. The enclosure allows the center to comfortably house all of its raptors including ones who are being rehabilitated and those who cannot be released back into the wild.
Their educational programs currently reach more than 2,000 children and adults a year, and over the next two years, the center aims to increase that number to 3,000. The center is also working on expanding its educational offerings from three programs to six or seven.
Parents can support the CFW by sponsoring a program in their children's schools or adopting a raptor for their child's classroom. Each program is $100 on the first day, and $85 each additional day, if the program is offered on more than one day. Information on adopting a raptor is available on the center's website, www.yorkcenterforwildlife.org.
"It's a natural connection between the kids and animals," said Lamb. "We try to encourage that."
