scat.

preface: since i work at a camp, i get the sammmme food every week. in order to maintain sanity, us naturalists find ways to look forward to eating the same meals over and over and over again. the following is definitely a story of how i do this: wednesdays for lunch we have chicken fingers and fries. but the best part is, they are paired with freshly baked brownies for dessert. this is DEF my downfall.

storytime: thursdays are our extended adventure days where we take the kids out and hike all day for 6 hours. we pack a lunch and set out on our journeys usually across the street into the Henry Cowell State Park which is a gorgeous redwood habitat extending miles and miles over the santa cruz mountains. almost every thursday at lunchtime i seize the opportunity to play a cruel joke on my students. while everyone is still eating, i head down the trail a bit to strategically place the brownie collection that i have nicely molded into three or four pieces of what we scientifically call, "scat" near the side of the trail.....you can already tell where this is going...once in the perfect place i head back to the lunch site to find my campers off in la-la land, not even noticing i was gone. after a significant amount of chill time, i gather them all up. before we head out i give them a talk about being good observers and looking for evidence of animals around us. "there are two types of major evidence that we observe that tell us that animals have been in the area. these examples are animal tracks, and scat." then i go on to tell them about how interesting scat is and how by dissecting scat, one can tell a lot about the animal that dropped it (ie, big animal, little animal, herbivore, carnivore etc). then i tell them to pay attention for these types of evidences and if we come upon them while hiking, we'll stop to hypothesize and make deductions.

as we're walking along the path, you guessed it, OF COURSE we come across some scat on the side of the path that one of my students found! so i bend down and start asking them questions: "big animal or little animal?" they reply, "medium." "yes medium okay, and (i grab a stick to begin poking it apart) what do you think is in this animals diet?" ...someone responds, "something chunky that's for sure!" i of course agree, knowing they are seeing the chocolate chips. by this time, some of them are definitely freaking out that i am even poking the scat with a stick. then of course i need to get a better look, so i pick up one "turd" with a leaf to examine it. now a few more students are starting to think i have really lost my marbles. then. as i'm pulling it apart with my bare hands to see "what else i can find in its diet" the next thing really to do is to bring it up to my nose and see what else i can deduce. i appropriately take a nice bigggggg wiff....this is the point where i lose some students. i lose them to the point of no return where they leave the circle because they cannot handle what their naturalist is doing. i am not offended by this reaction so i merely continue the process of deduction. finally, yes, the moment you've been waiting for. i tell them that if they're really brave, a good dedicated scientist will even try a piece to see if it tastes like anything they can recognize, i say this as i pick off a small piece, put it into my mouth, and begin chewing.

most of them SCREAM and jump back - baffled that anyone would ever do something like this. some of them stand there in shock with no reaction. sadly their faces turn pale and their lips begin to turn blue as they stand there thinking their naturalist just ate poop.


all of this to say, i continue pulling small chunks off, trying to identify the taste and then, out of no where i stop. i stop and i look at them, and i ask them in a VERY offended voice "you guys, do you actually seriously think, that i would be dumb enough to pick up a piece of crap off the ground and EAT IT?!!? COME ON!! IT'S A BROWNIE!!" at this point, i have lost all trust with my trail group. but to be honest i could care less because it was DEFINITELY worth it!! the first and biggest response is anger. they are TICKED! they have just been HAD - falling for the best prank in the book....the second response is obvious relief that their naturalist isn't as idiotic as previously assumed.

at the end of it, everyone is DYING, counselors included thinking their naturalist had just eaten crap. after everyone has had a small chunk of "scat" the story has now become the talk of the town, the story of the century the entire rest of the day. mark my words, i will continue to do this as long as i am involved in education - it just doesn't get much better than this.

i love my job :)

disclaimer: just to let you know, i do tell the kids that eating scat is not a very effective way of identifying animal diets.