Busch Wildlife

Francis Howell PAT program puts on an activity at Busch Wildlife every spring and every fall. This is always a fun activity the kids enjoy and we try to make at least once a year.

When you first get there they have a little open play where you can play with stuffed animals of all kinds of nature animals and other activities to do. Then they have a couple of people from Conservation come over and speak with the kids and show them some live animals. This time they brought out a snake and a turtle. Here is a picture of the kids touching the turtle they brought out.Next they brought out a green tree snake. They walked around and let all the kids touch it. And if you can remember a previous post where Adriana is terrified of snakes and wouldn't touch one, I guess this one wasn't so scary. Or maybe it was the fact that she saw all the other little kids touching it, but she actually touched it! I was really shocked. Here is the photo the shows her petting it.Well of course Andrew couldn't be shown up by his sissy so he also touched it. I took the picture a little too late though and missed his hand on the snake but he really did touch it!After the classroom discussion they have everyone go outside for a nature walk. But before the nature walk Ms. Vi brought out two box turtles and showed us how you can tell if a turtle is a boy or girl. A boy turtle has red eyes and more color on him than a girl. A girl has brown eyes and less colorful. After learning this we went home to see what our turtle was and he was a boy....thats how he became Prince! Then the boy and girl turtle had a race and the girl turtle won! Here is a picture of the race.Then was the time for the nature walk. Along the way Ms. Vi showed us all kinds of neat things. Here is a homemade container for a stink bug (there is a technical term for it but I'm having a brain fart and can't remember).They had a little area set up for bird watching. There was a big wall set up with little holes you can see through and binoculars for bird watching. On the other side of the wall is several bird feeders to keep the birds coming over.
And the last picture is the kids walking around on the trail. I couldn't help but take this one because they were so darn cute holding hands while walking together!