Volunteering as naturalists on the deck of the visitor center at the National Elk Refuge with our skulls and snakes, we meet people from all over the country and the world. Some encounters are educational, some are merely social, and some are comical.
We enjoy educating others about the natural world. In return, others share information they’ve learned with us or they ask questions that force us to research answers. By constantly learning and interacting with others, we hope to keep our minds flexible and inquiring.
Young Visitors
Children offer some of our fondest contacts. Although we often hear that children today are bored and jaded, we meet many who are enthusiastic and attentive. One such child carried an impressive camera when he stepped onto the deck where we awaited.
“Nice camera!” I commented. “Is it yours?”
He beamed. “I plan to pay for this camera by winning photo contests with it!” I had no doubts that he would!
Although a mere handful of visitors have known all the skulls that we arrange on a table, a 15-year-old boy once identified all 30 skulls before turning to the bighorn sheep skull on the floor of the deck. “And that’s a desert bighorn,” he said.
I gasped. “We’re in the Rocky Mountains! How did you know that’s a desert bighorn?” I asked. I’d acquired the skull in the Sonoran Desert in Arizona, but never thought the casual observer could tell the difference.
The boy shrugged. “Well, the horns kind of curve out instead of straight around.” When I asked how he knew all this, he admitted that he worked with a taxidermist.
Earlier this summer while working in the field with the Refuge biologist, I came across a bison carcass. Impressed by the size of the humerus (upper arm), I yanked the bone from the rest of the remains to use for education with the skulls on the deck.
Demonstrating the immense size and weight of the bone to a 10-year-old boy one morning, I handed him the humerus to inspect for himself. After running his fingers around its circumference, the boy asked, “Why is one side rough and the other side smooth?” It had something to do with muscle attachment, I was sure. But I had no clear reason to give him. It was one of those questions that required research.
Mature Visitors
Adults prove just as interested in skulls as children. As one man approached the table, his eyes widened in delight. After he identified nearly all of the skulls, I asked him what he did for a living. “I teach comparative anatomy at a university,” he said. We spent the next half hour comparing notes!
But perhaps I learned the most from a visitor who appeared to be in his early thirties. As he examined and identified most of the skulls, he revealed that he was the artist in resident for the week at the National Museum of Wildlife Art just up the road. As a sculptor, he’d studied biology and comparative anatomy for his undergraduate work to help him create realistic, vital sculptures.
After discussing differences in mammal neck vertebrae that help hold up heavy skulls and ornaments such as antlers, I asked the artist if he knew anything about a ligament that might connect these vertebrae.
“That’s the nuchal ligament,” he said and then continued to describe one he’d severed from a bison after a hunt. “It attached to the back of the skull and was as thick as a cable. When I cut it from the skull, it shot back like a giant rubber band!” The ligament, I learned, aids hoofed animals as they lift their heads while grazing and browsing.
Snake Encounters
Even more than skulls, however, the snakes attract much attention. People who fear them still watch with curiosity from a respectful distance as a snake winds through Chuck’s fingers and around his wrist. “This is a constrictor,” he says as Hatch, the bullsnake, encircles his hand. He holds his hand down, fingers extended. “She’s holding onto me – I’m not holding onto her.” While some are repulsed by the snakes, most are fascinated. And the occasional herpetologist who visits gets into in-depth conversations with Chuck, each sharing information with the other.
Because Chuck keeps the snakes’ temperatures comfortable and stable in a red picnic cooler, visitors have no idea that live snakes are on the deck until one is removed. Chuck can place the cooler in the shade or the sun to adjust temperature as needed. On cool mornings, this usually means setting it in the open on the deck where the sun can radiate its heat.
As the cooler sat on the deck one morning absorbing warmth for the four snakes inside, a visitor, intent on the view as he approached, tripped over it. “You’d better move that,” I told Chuck as the visitor grinned sheepishly. “Someone might get hurt.”
“Oh, that’s okay,” the visitor said. “If it had been a snake, it would’ve bitten me!”
Naturally, we extracted a snake from the box to the surprise and delight of this visitor.
For us, working on the deck of the National Elk Refuge visitor center is educational, rewarding, and (at times) amusing!