The following story was written by my daughter as an assignment for "Take Your Son/Daughter To Work Day" a couple of years ago. I no longer work at Woodlawn Nature Center but I just HAVE to keep this!

My Day at Woodlawn Nature Center

Hello! My name is Candy and I am 14 years old, and my school had a project called Take Your Son or Daughter to Work Day. My mother is a Naturalist/Director at Woodlawn Nature Center. She gives programs to school groups, educates people of any age about nature and the importance of keeping the environment clean. She also assist people who finds a certain animal in their backyard and how to take care of it, or if it’s already dead, to bring it back to the center for display unless it’s completely mutilated. When I was at Woodlawn for a day, she had a group of preschoolers come in and I helped with that by keeping them seated or staying in line. We went out in the woods and identified ‘creepy crawlies,’ or bugs and insects. We looked under logs and rocks and found a few such as night crawlers, pill bugs, centipedes and others. After they left my mother and I went outside and walked on the trails and she taught me various plants and trees and flowers.

Then we had to clean up the litter. We went back to get some bags and went back to the trails to pick up litter. We found rubber parts, plastic parts, and a lot of glass that didn’t belong in the environment and could injure people and animals. We filled all of our bags with litter, and there was still a lot left. You have to learn how to NOT litter. Littering means to place an object that does not belong on the earth, such as throwing a can or bottle or tires or glass or boxes, etc. on the ground. This can harm the environment.

For example… You’re driving and you find an empty plastic coke holder, you know, with the holes that hold the soda cans. You pick it up and throw it out of the car and it lands on the grass. Suppose a seagull comes down and mistakes it as food. The seagull pokes at it, then puts it’s head through the holes. Finding that it’s not food, it pulls its head out – only it can’t. It’s stuck in the plastic. It twists and turns until the plastic tightens on the Seagull’s neck, finally cutting off the air circulation, and it suffocates a slow, painful death, only because you were too lazy to get home and put it in the trash, or put it in a recycling bin.

Another example… You finish your Pepsi and throw the can outside. A raccoon happens to come upon it and pokes at it. It tears it up and puts a piece of the can that has rough, sharp edges that could easily slice your finger nice and deeply, into it’s mouth. It swallows, while the edges cut its throat up on the way down to its stomach, cutting up its stomach. It dies of internal bleeding. Doesn’t sound like fun to me. If YOU think it’s fun, then do it to yourself, not animals.

Another example… You’re finishing up your beer bottle and throw it in the woods where it shatters. A baby rabbit hops alongside with its mother. The mother hops over to a patch of clovers while the baby goes exploring. The sun beats down on the glass, making it scorching hot and reflecting it into the baby rabbit’s eyes. The baby hops around, and then jumps on the hot, sharp glass, slicing in its feet and between its toes, making it unable to move. It’s too far away from its mother, so the mother rabbit cannot find her baby rabbit. While she sniffs around, the baby is on the ground, twitching, while glass under it keeps cutting into its soft fur and tender skin. A few days later, it dies from starvation and lack of water, and is left to rot for bugs to eat it alive, while the hot sun makes it smell rancid.

All because of you and your thinking that the earth is YOUR trashcan. Well, I’ve got news for you! It ISN’T a trashcan. So before you think to throw that innocent soda can outside since it’ll just trash up your car, why don’t you think twice and notice that you are still trashing up something – your own PLANET. You LIVE on EARTH. Why do you want to TRASH it up? You people make it smell bad, too, by all of the pollution. Why don’t you think up some way to make gas healthy for the air? I bet earth would be a more manageable place to live in. I KNOW there’s a way to make the gas healthier. There has to be. Trust me, by throwing out even the tiniest piece of glass outside thinking it won’t make a difference; it DOES make a difference to the environment. It doesn’t belong there. Animals, trees, flowers, plants, water, and people belong on the earth. Not that crap that people throw on the ground that DESTROYS it.

Thank you for reading my ranting. Oh, and that was my day at Woodlawn Nature Center. Please stop by sometime!