The P.A.C.K. animal advocacy club's first meeting of the year, and thirty-some sixth graders who can now pick a copperhead out of a lineup faster than their parents can.
I walked into the library at Pocahontas Middle School on Monday, October 19, put a real text message from my phone up on the screen, and did not introduce myself. The room had ten seconds to vote on it. About half of them got it wrong.
That was the point. By the end of the afternoon, the same photo went back up, and almost nobody missed it.
This was the first meeting of the year for the P.A.C.K., the school's humane education and animal advocacy club. Debra Milby, the sixth grade counselor who sponsors it, had invited me to talk about native Virginia snakes, and more than 30 students had brought signed notes from home and arranged rides so they could stay after school for it. That is a lot of effort for a middle schooler to put into snakes. It told me before I said a word that this was going to be a good room.
The rules of the game
Every case in the session comes from a real call or text to my phone. Before I reveal anything, the room votes: standing, hands, or shouting. No vote, no learning.
Then we split the room down the middle and each side picked a team name. It had to be a snake. Thirty seconds. That is how I ended up refereeing Team Rattlers against Team Boomslang. (A boomslang is an African tree snake. Nobody in Virginia will ever meet one. The kids did not care, and the name was too good to overrule.)
I kept score on the whiteboard and put my phone away in front of the room: for the next hour I was not answering calls, so if a snake turned up in Henrico, they were on their own.
How the hour went
No lecture. The whole session was a game, and the room earned every answer by voting first.
- Guess the numbers. Three questions about Virginia's snakes. Most of the room guessed wrong on all three, in the same direction most adults do.
- The map round. One student per team at the screen, pointing at where Virginia's venomous snakes actually live. Geography does most of the job before you ever look at the snake.
- The copperhead check. The one short teaching moment in the whole hour: a test you can run from across the yard, and the popular rules their parents taught them that get harmless snakes killed.
- Six real calls. Texts and voicemails from my phone: a pool, a creek, a flowerbed, a leaf pile, a dad with a shovel, and a bite under a deck. Vote, then the verdict. One was a trap, one was hard to even see, and one had no snake in the photo at all because the snake was not the danger.
- Lightning rounds. A snake photo, five seconds, stand or sit. Scored by team. The room got fast.
- The tape measure. One volunteer per team paced out a safe distance from a snake, then we measured. Most kids were off, and the direction they were off in is the whole safety lesson.
- Chain reaction. What happens if every snake in Henrico vanished overnight? The club built the chain themselves, link by link, and it did not end where they expected.
- Myth or fact. Six things everybody's uncle has said about snakes. Stand for fact, sit for myth. The answers are not printed here. Ask a P.A.C.K. member, then ask them how they would find out for sure, because that question is the real lesson.
- The yard. One photo, one question: "There's a snake in my yard every week. Why?" Find four things wrong. A snake in your yard is a report card on your yard.
Final score
Team Boomslang took it by two points. It was close the whole way, and Team Rattlers has a rematch coming.
Everybody earned the three rescue badges I promised at the start. Spot: you can pick out the one venomous snake we have around here, from a safe distance. Act: you know what to do when you find a snake and what to do if someone is bitten. Protect: you know why killing snakes makes a yard worse, not safer.
One student's answer on the shovel case summed up the whole hour better than my slides did: don't kill it even if it is venomous.
You do not have to like snakes. You just have to stop killing the wrong ones. Now you are the person in your house who can tell the difference.
What they took home
Every student left with two things. The first is a pocket card. One side is the copperhead check, with photos. The other side is what to do if you find a snake, what to do and what not to do if someone is bitten, Poison Control, and the number to text a photo to for a free ID. It fits in a wallet or a backpack pocket and it does not need a signal.
The second is a fridge magnet with the SaveSnakes rescue number, so that if a snake ever turns up somewhere it cannot stay, the whole family knows who to call before anyone reaches for a shovel.
Their mission this week
I asked for three small things in return, and they agreed to all of them.
- Yard check tonight. Find the things in the yard that invite snakes in, and fix the easy ones.
- Quiz a grown-up. Show an adult a snake photo and ask, copperhead or not? Then teach them the check on the card.
- Say the line. Next time someone grabs a shovel, they know what to say to make it stop. It is not "you're wrong."
Thirty students, each reaching a household and a few neighbors, is a few hundred people in Henrico who now have a card on the fridge and a kid in the house who can explain it. That is more people than I will reach on rescue calls in a year, and it is the version of this work I would like to do a lot more of.
My thanks to Ms. Milby and the P.A.C.K. for the invitation, to the school for the library, and to the parents who signed the notes and drove the pickups.
Teachers and club sponsors: bring this to your school
The session runs a little over an hour, fits a library or a classroom, and costs nothing. It works for middle and high school groups, scout troops, and after-school clubs anywhere in Greater Richmond. Every student leaves with a pocket card.
To set one up, email savesnakesorg@gmail.com or text (804) 404-5594.
Want this at your school?
An hour, a library or a classroom, no cost. Middle and high school groups, scout troops and after-school clubs anywhere in Greater Richmond.
Email savesnakesorg@gmail.com Text (804) 404-5594