Reptile & Amphibian Day      March 13, 2004

North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences    Raleigh, NC

By chance, the father of a student at my school works at the state science museum in downtown Raleigh. He coordinates the annual Reptile & Amphibian Day for the museum. He found out that I was a boa enthusiast and invited me and my Reptile Club at school to create an exhibit on boa constrictors. We set up an exhibit with a tri-fold poster display, books, informational handouts, lots of shed skins, and six boas. I knew this was a popular event and it got some good press in the local paper but I was not prepared for what happened. 14,500 people (by unofficial count) showed up! In one day!! It turns out that we were the only exhibit allowing some serious hands-on activity which made our exhibit all the more popular. I wish everyone could have seen how these people responded to the boas. We turned on incredible numbers of people to these beautiful animals. The most telling thing for me was I kept seeing familiar faces......kids were making their parents bring them back to the top floor to experience our animals again and again. One kid showed up five times, but his Mom would never get closer than 25 yards. I know we have created some serious problems for parents. So many kids kept mentioning their birthdays! I wish I had recorded everything but I was so busy that I all I got was a small number of mediocre photos. The photos below were taken before the event began and at the very end when I was able to pull free and snap a few photos. I had three students from my Club helping me and we worked 8-5. They were terrific working with the young kids. There were literally thousands of people who touched or handled a snake for the first time. We got so busy, we couldn't even see down the hall in either direction. At one point, I looked to my right and left and saw kids that we had turned onto the animals earlier in the day demonstrating the animals to new kids that were arriving. A memorable and exhausting day.

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Artwork used in the poster display

Written Info from the posters in MS Word format:
Classification
General Info