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26 September 2003

The Ethics of Collecting (or should it be The Collecting of Ethics?)

(Second of a series)

by Susan Campbell

"Oh the kids are completely loving this camp. Much better than last week at the…" I interrupted my sister, Nancy, "Yeah, Shipwreck Week was the theme, right? Sounds kind of lame." "Yes," she said. "And they didn’t do anything all week but make fish and boats out of construction paper. They went swimming once--for an hour--and visited the Dallas World Aquarium." (She knows this bugs me. When I do a summer camp, we might construct electromagnets with wired switches, or hike the Spring Creek Forest Preserve looking for a tickle tongue tree, or go down to Glen Rose and learn about dinos while we swim around their fossilized footprints.)

My niece, Caroline and her brother, Spencer went to a pretty good camp this summer after being bored by the unimaginative weeklong youth center "Shipwreck" camp. This was a week at a working farm and included 2 overnights. Caroline and Spencer, 7- and 5-years old, had a ball. They got to ride horses and splash in the stock pond. Each day, one activity was to learn about and feed the different farm animals. Then they might check out the pastures or do a craft or (wow) run and play. I enjoyed hearing about their fun. It reminded me of my sister’s and my carefree summers spent at Thunderbird Ranch, unarguably the world’s best summer day camp ever, ever, ever. I’m still mad that I outgrew my TR t-shirt.

The next night, around 9 pm, Nancy called to ask me what to do about the huge tadpoles that Spunk (OK, that’s what we call Spencer) caught at camp. I asked if they were still at camp, but she told me that they were in a little critter cage on the kitchen counter. She told me that a lot of the water splashed out between the pond and home, so she added some for them. She wanted to know what to feed them.

Stuff like this makes my brain start squiggling around.

Now, I’m certainly not mad at Nancy. She’s about the most ardent animal lover/defender I know. Here she was, trying to find out the right thing to do for them. I’m afraid lots of grossed out parents would have just sent them for a quick "burial at sea". It’s just that it’s been a while since those Thunderbird Ranch days. Also, she’s the CPA. I’m the "Creek Lady". She wears pretty suits and "girl" shoes. I think leeches are pretty. My faves are t-shirts and cutoffs plus my "fountain" sneakers (when they’re full of creek water, it shoots through the big toe holes and I just like that in a shoe). I knew that what I was about to tell her was going to make her cringe.

"Nance, did you put tap water in there?" "Yes," she said. "Oh no," she sounded worried. "Chlorine. I can’t believe I didn’t think about that. Will it hurt them?" "Well, it could…I don’t know," I said. "We better get them in some pond water pretty quick. Let’s meet halfway. I’ll get them from you and put them in my aquarium with the pond slider and minnows." I asked her for a description. It sounded like a pair of bullfrog tadpoles. "Well, let’s get going. Oh, what’d y’all name them?" I asked. "I told Spunk that their names were "Good" and "Bye" and that I was calling Aunt Susan," she said.

Meeting halfway in the Dallas Metroplex (yea, that’s what we call it) means I had 30 minutes to drive and think. I thought about the fact that Spencer, at age 5, had been allowed to remove two tadpoles from the camp’s pond and to take them home in a paper cup to an uncertain future. I’m a big believer in gentle catch and release. Kid’s need to do this. I think that it’s important to touch, feel and do -- it’s how we learn. But…no one at the camp thought to tell him how to care for them. No one asked if he had a ready habitat for them. No one wondered whether removing these tadpoles would start a chain reaction of change in and around the pond. Perhaps more accurately, no one thought.

I deal with this all of the time. In an average year, I lead about 1,200 kids on outdoor adventures. I am constantly peppered with, "Can I keep him. He’s so cute!" My standard response and their standard answers go like this: "Well, do you have a habitat ready for him at home?" "No, but I have a jar/shoe box." "Do you know what he eats?" "Grass? Dirt? Milky Way bars?" "If you did keep him, would you ever forget to feed him?" "Well, maybe. No. I won’t forget him. Can I have him?" "Oh, we better leave him here." I never let kids take live things out, unless it’s a plant and there are lots and lots of them around. Then, we would use a key guide to identify it and press it in a plant press we made together.

Sometimes I get stories like: "We found a frog so we put him in a bucket of water, but he died." I ask, "Are you sure it was a frog and not a toad? Frogs are hard to catch, because they jump so far. Toads hardly jump at all." "Oh, it was a frog all right. I picked him up and he was all wet and bumpy." "But, you were able to just pick him up? You know that frogs live in or right around water all the time, but toads live on land. If you were able to just pick him up, I’ll bet he was a toad, and he probably drowned in that bucket of water."

I think the one that bummed me out the most was the lady who told me that she found a turtle "out in the country", brought it home, put it in a bucket of water, and was surprised that it died overnight. After a couple of questions, I knew it had been a box turtle--a LAND turtle--one that likely could have lived to be 130 years old! There’s a limit to how long someone or something can tread water.

Next time I’ll tell you about my big mistake with these tadpoles. (Don’t worry though, they’re fine…)