Tuesday afternoon was a glorious sun-filled late October event that cried out not to be wasted. With that in mind, Judy took Pat up on an invitation to join her Scarlett Nature Club for an after school walk in Mitchell-Scarlett Woods. Pat, Treasurer of our newly founded Friends of Scarlett Mitchell Woods group, is also a retired teacher and a volunteer naturalist with the AAPS Environmental Education program, so she spent quite a bit of time in preparation for this walk. Her focus was to have the kids see how many different kinds of acorns they could find and identify. According to various plant surveys that have been done in the past there are 7 or 8 different oaks growing in the area.
Sixth grade energy hijacked the walk somewhat – there were lots of acorns on the ground, but most of them were missing the caps which would help identify them. The kids loved spending time in the woods though, especially climbing on any fallen logs they could find. Mother Nature helped out in the end by providing a tiny Dekay’s brown snake just off the trail. It took a bit of digging in the leaves, but Pat was finally able to capture the snake so all the kids could see it close up. I managed to get a photo of them before Pat mercifully let the little snake go. Serendipity at work!
Pat later sent me this message: “You won’t believe this, but we found a second DeKay’s brown snake after you left!!! Two in one day — after seeing only two or three in thirty years!
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