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Seven Springs Students Receive Animated Lesson

Klint Lowry/SUNCOAST

Lowry Park Zoo "Animal Ambassador" Melinda Mendolusky is upstaged by the preening porcupine she brought as part of her presentation at Seven Springs Elementary School, which she customed to address the same points the students had been studying in class about animals in their natural habitats.

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By KLINT LOWRY | The Suncoast News

Published: December 6, 2008

W.C. Fields once warned never to work with animals or small children.

That's sound advice perhaps if you're trying to revive Vaudeville, but in education, kids and critters make for a fun and informative time, as was seen last week at Seven Springs Elementary School, as students welcomed a pair of guest speakers whose visual aids were of the living, breathing variety.

On Nov. 24, Florida Bat Conservancy assistant director Jennifer Smith came by to separate fact from fiction about bats.

Her visit was followed on Nov. 25 by an appearance by Melinda Mendolusky, who brought with her a veritable menagerie of creatures of all kinds from all over the world. Mendolusky is the "Animal Ambassador" for the Lowry Park Zoo, in Tampa.

The animal onslaught marked the conclusion of a unit being studied throughout the school on how animals are adapted to their habitats.

"We have themes; everybody is on the same theme at the same time," explained media specialist Barb Huling, who arranged for Smith to bring her bats. All elementary school students work on themes simultaneously, guaranteeing continuity throughout the district. It also makes special events relevant to all students.

Huling said she got the idea to invite Smith to the school after she'd read a story, "There was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Bat," to some of the younger students.

"When I read to them a lot of them said, 'Ooh, we're studying bats right now,' " Huling said.

With Halloween come and gone, this is the tail end of the busy season for those in the bat business, Smith said. But it's a gratifying time, when she gets to dispel the myths and show the interesting reality about bats.

"The big key point is to get kids to understand that bats are not all the same," Smith said. "They're all different; they all have a beneficial purpose."

Wherever she takes her presentation, Smith is greeted with a combination of curiosity and dread from adults and children alike, she said. They're expecting fanged, blood-sucking, seagull-sized monsters that are ready to swoop straight for the neck of the nearest innocent victim.

But children are quick to warm up when she shows them a slide show on the winged mammals that includes close-ups of various varieties of bats while she shares some pertinent bat-facts.

There are about 1,000 kinds of bats, Smith said. Only three of them would be considered vampire bats, and none live in North America. In Florida there are two primary species of bats.

The larger of the two is only about 4 inches in length, and they both live on insects. A single bat can eat up to 3,000 insects every night, serving an important purpose to the local ecology.

Once she has them warmed up to bats, Smith brings out the real thing, a two-inch evening bat that rests in the palm of her hand.

"It's really nice to see their faces light up when they see them for the first time," Smith said.

There is a definite impact to seeing the animals right in front of them, second grade teacher Cary Green said. That is why she arranged to have Mendolusky come to the school to give a presentation titled "Scales, Feathers and Fur."

"We do follow the standards that the schools use," Mendolusky said. "We have about 70 animals we use for our programs. And depending on what the kids are learning at school we'll bring animals that are tailored to what the kids are learning."

To meet the "animals and their habitats" theme, Mendolusky brought a diverse sampling of creatures. The "oohs" and "ahhs" got louder as one by one she brought out a tarantula, an Australian white tree frog, a small breed of toucan called a green acari, and the star of the show, a prehensile-tailed South American porcupine.

It is a tremendous opportunity, Green said, to have an expert come and explain talk about these exotic creatures while the children can see them.

"The advantage is Lowry Park Zoo is coming to us," Green said.

For barely $1 per student, they can all have this experience, compared to the cost and logistics of trying to take 600 kids to the zoo.

"It's a way for the kids to really understand," she said.

Klint Lowry can be reached at 727-815-1067 or lowry@suncoastnews.com.

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