If you've ever thought nothing could hold an 8-year-old's attention like his or her big brother's Wii game, you haven't seen 35 second-graders crowded into a classroom with two zoo ladies and a hedgehog.
The rain forest birds were an obvious hit for the Ramirez Thomas Elementary students. The snake, too, of course. But a hedgehog?
As zoo lady Courtney Bowers— a financial planner in her other life— held tiny Prickle in a towel and walked among the rows of chairs, the kids said "ohhhh" in lowered voices and craned their necks to see her.
As part of the "Zoo to You" program of the Rio Grande Zoo— a facility of the Albuquerque Biological Park— volunteers travel in a brightly colored van bringing "portable" animals throughout New Mexico.
"Could we bring an alligator?" asked the other zoo lady, Judy Anderson, Bowers' mother and a bed-and-breakfast owner in Albuquerque.
"No!" answered the children.
"Could we bring an elephant?" Anderson asked.
"No!"
"That's right— that's why we have to bring smaller animals," Anderson said, standing behind tables topped with cages holding Sydney the rainbow lorikeet, Aussie the gala cockatoo, Dusty the chinchilla and Doc Hopaday the rabbit, a pet that someone released onto zoo grounds and was taken into safekeeping.
"The reptiles don't have names," said Anderson, gingerly picking up a snake. "This is the first time I've held the corn snake."
"I have a gopher snake— it only eats mice," volunteered 8-year-old Aleah Vela.
"See how his underside looks like corn?" Bower asked, pointing out the skin designs to the students.
Moving along to Dusty the chinchilla— so named because the zoo ladies have to give him a dust bath every day to keep his coat clean— Jeremy Perez, 8, said, "I thought it was a big rat."
Anderson asked the students how many of them had visited the zoo, and almost all of them raised their hands.
"You can actually go into the lorikeet cage there yourself and feed the birds nectar," she said.
"Tell your parents— no, tell your grandmother you want to go to the zoo," Anderson said.
Besides bringing live animals, the zoo ladies also brought artifacts.
"This is a sea turtle shell," said Anderson, who gave Aldo Almeida, 8, the chance to get down on all fours so she could place the shell on his back.
"That's what it would be like to haul around your own house all day," Anderson said.
"The kids have been excited for weeks," said their teacher, Madelin Means, "especially since today is the day before Earth Day, and we've been studying about the rain forest."
Means said she had heard about the zoo van and called to invite them to visit the first-grade class she previously taught.
"Even though some of them saw the animals last year," Means said, "they're still so excited."
Means' class was joined by the second-grade bilingual class of Aurora Cortez-Nuño.
After the visit at Ramirez Thomas, the zoo van was headed north for a few days, where it will be stopping at Ponderosa Montessori in White Rock and the nonprofit Family Strengths Network and Piñon Elementary in Los Alamos.
The "Zoo to You" program is in its 27th year, with its one zoo van staffed by some 30 rotating volunteers. From September through May, the van keeps busy going to schools.
"In the summer, it goes to day-care programs, senior homes, libraries and summer camps," said Allyson Zahm, acting BioPark education curator. The zoo van's visits are free to participating locations.
"It's so fun," Zahm said. "People act like it's celebrities pulling up into town."
As the zoo ladies talked about their travels with the Ramirez Thomas students, they explained how they travel with their animal friends.
"The animals sleep in the hotel room with us," Bowers explained.
"All except Prickle," Anderson said of the hedgehog. "She's nocturnal, which means she stays up all night playing. So she has to sleep in the bathroom or else she'd keep us awake all night making noise."
