Bears, alligators and children: Have you learned how to avoid them?
The natural world is a land of adventure.
Like a while back my wife and her family are visiting Yellowstone National Park, where grizzly bears roam, and her little 10-year-old niece is tagging along.
One morning my wife goes for a hike in the woods, and she comes across this eerily silent, heavily shaded, secluded spot that’s ripe with bear signs: It smells like bears; it has claw marks high on the tree trunks; and it has fur embedded in the bark where bears rubbed their backs.
So it’s creeping her out, and she’s warily slinking through, glancing over her shoulder now and then.
She comes around a bend, and through a break in the trees, just a few feet away, she is shocked to see….
Her cute little blonde, blue-eyed, 10-year-old niece, who looks up, sees her aunt, and shows her a piece of colored paper.
“If I get all these boxes checked off, I become a Junior Ranger!” she says.
Looking farther afield, my wife sees eight other little recruits, all learning fascinating nature facts from a uniformed guide, and no one in immediate risk of bear attack.
Braving her aunt’s near-certain dread, the little girl did become a Junior Ranger, that day. And because of her experiences in the great outdoors, she developed a deep appreciation of nature. And today she works for a publishing company in New York City, and….
Well, she’s not scared of bears, anyway. And maybe she should be, that close to Wall Street.
If we don’t have a Junior Ranger program here in Columbus, we should get one, to take kids down by the river and teach them about the environment. (“Kids, this is a dirty diaper someone threw down on the Riverwalk just five feet from a trash can. So let this be a lesson to you: If you ever see a dirty diaper on the ground like this, do NOT touch it!”)
If parents here need a Junior Ranger gig, because they’re at the point they just want to drop their kids off in the woods and drive away, they can go downstream to Omaha, Ga., to Florence Marina State Park.
That’s where kids 6 through 12 can go to Junior Ranger Day Camp 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday, for $10 each. They have to pack their own lunch and bring their own water, but they get to spend five hours on “hikes, crafts, games, and more,” says the park off Georgia Highway 39.
Florence is a great place to marvel at nature, because it has alligators around it. (“Kids, this is an alligator. Do not feed it. Feeding alligators makes humans remind them of food. Plus you’re going to want that lunch later.”)
Another advantage to the Omaha area is it had some Bigfoot sightings a while back, so that could be educational, too. (“Kids, this is Bigfoot. He does not exist, so do not believe in him. And don’t feed him, either. Last year he spilled apple juice all over the suit.”)
Kids today spend way too much time inside, much of it with their minds stuck in a machine such as a smartphone, video game console or flat-screen TV. If they don’t get out in nature, they may develop an unreasoning fear of it, because of the things they see in the machines.
Sometimes people hear only the bad stories – like the one about a Florida woman being eaten by an alligator, which I used for a column – or a recent report of a giant python swallowing a woman whole when she went out to check on her garden.
Some of the nature videos you find online are just terrifying. One shows a guy reeling in a fish as an alligator shoots through the water like a jet ski and snaps the catch right off the line.
People think gators are slow, having seen them plodding along a riverbank, but they swim like sharks.
Children need to understand these things, to appreciate the wonders of nature – particularly if they haven’t learned to swim and you want to scare them out of even going near the water. (“Kids, this is how fast an alligator can get you….”)
So, be a responsible parent, and consider the advantages of an outdoor education, as you drive away.
Don’t forget to pack a lunch.
This story was originally published July 6, 2018 at 5:59 PM.