Tale of a Second-Grade Urban Wildlife Biologist
By: The Good Men Project
Tags: Wildlife, Environment, Parenting, Climate Change, Childhood

Tale of a Second-Grade Urban Wildlife Biologist

Photo Credit: iStock

By David Davis

“I want to do something with animals.”

As a dad who has encouraged his kids to spend time outside, pored over naturalists guides to be able to identify plants and wildlife for them at the drop of a hat, and taken them hiking in all seasons, this is a proud moment. We’ve talked about birds and mammals, and I habitually name various butterflies when we run across them. Now, my daughter wants to do her first science project about animals.

“And TV.”

I confirm that we’re still talking about the science project — which evidently we are — and ask her to clarify. There’s a shrug and smile. She reiterates without the pause this time, “I want to do a project about animals and TV.” I ask more questions, hoping that there’s a particular idea that she’s having trouble articulating. There isn’t. She’s just certain that she wants to do a science project that involves both animals and television. I decide this might be one of those topics that we revisit later, to see if there’s a consistent answer.

Science projects are a big deal at my house, or at least I like them to be. My first job was in photogrammetry, the branch of the mapping sciences that produces precision imagery and terrain models, often for an audience of scientists and engineers. Presently, I work in human capital for an organization that employs thousands of scientists of various stripes. The bulk of my career has either been about the application of science, or about helping to effectively run organizations engaged in science and engineering. School science fairs are a good way to get kids thinking about how the natural world works and what it might be like to do that for a living.

A proper science project starts with a topic that the kids pick because it grabs their interest. But, the scope of the topic has to be something the kids can legitimately research themselves. That sometimes requires coaching. Particularly when they’re younger, it can mean helping them to sculpt an interest into a research question. Preferably, I like to encourage cultivating some kind of other science or engineering skills at a kid-friendly level. If they can build something based on what they’ve learned or apply the scientific method, even better. If the project involves also doing something outside, learning about the natural world, it’s perfect.

A week later, I broach the question with my daughter again, and she’s resolute. She responds with a tone that might as well ask, “Don’t you remember, Dad?”

Image courtesy of principal investigator.

“Animals and TV.”

“OK. I’m sure we can figure something out.” I have no idea what we’re going to figure out. I ask her to think more about what she wants to do, and no, watching documentaries about animals doesn’t count. This detail shoots down the bulk of her initial ideas. I tell her I’ll try to come up with some ideas to help too, but it needs to be her project and she needs to own it.

A couple of years ago, I attended an outdoors show with my brother and his fishing buddies. “Outdoors” apparently means rifles, shotguns, fishing rods, and camouflage everything. Having bought my ticket online and in so doing, gave up my name and address to the marketing machine, I now get more hunting and fishing catalogs and mailers than I suspect is typical for other vegetarians. I’m not sure I need venison jerky. But, as I’m dropping an unwanted catalog into the recycling bin, a sale on the back page catches my eye, and an idea strikes.

Strictly speaking, it’s a deer camera. Hunters use them to scout out deer trails to find productive places to set up a tree stand. Like absolutely everything else in the universe of hunting and fishing gear, it’s decked out in Realtree camouflage. The camera reacts to motion and uses infrared light to take pictures at night. Most important, it also takes video. For my daughter’s purposes, that makes it a TV camera.

I ask her questions about what kind of animals she wants to research. No surprises, she means local wildlife. I describe the camera trap as a prospective research tool, and I watch the same dominoes fall down in her head as she reasons through setting up such a camera trap, cataloging what animals we see, learning about the differences between the ones that come in the day and the night, learning about their diets and ranges, and presenting on what wild animals live in the city. It’s a plan.

At first, the camera trap doesn’t catch anything. This goes on for days. The investment in the camera seems more and more like a dumb idea on my part, and I worry that I’ve boxed my daughter in on a project that isn’t going to produce anything. After all, we live in a small city.

Then, we see an image with movement that’s not a swaying branch or a car turning around in our driveway. It’s a grey tree squirrel, a disappointingly ubiquitous and predictable visitor. We began to catch about five squirrels a day.

My daughter starts getting bored.

This is important, and I’m actually glad that this has emerged as part of the process. Real science is often tedious, sometimes frustrating. Your first effort doesn’t usually result in articulating special relativity or discovering a heretofore unknown genus. There’s a lot of sleuthing why something doesn’t seem to be working, or why data are counterintuitive. Frustration leads to questions about why and how and can necessitate decisions about changing methods.

My daughter wonders about repositioning the camera trap a little and cutting a small, low branch that could be obstructing the sensor. That’s not how she phrases it, but that’s precisely what she means. So, I help her reposition the camera and grab her goggles, gloves, and a bow saw from the basement. She gets sawdust everywhere and sap on her shirt.

The situation improves immediately.

Overnight we catch an opossum, wandering about the yard on its opossum errands. The next night, there’s a black and white house cat, who quickly becomes a perennial visitor. There’s first one, and then several whitetail deer, before the pièce de résistance, a red fox, which the camera traps catches with his leg raised, urinating on the hosta. My daughter cackles as we watch that video for the fifth time, and her older brother is green with envy.

Daylight hours find cardinals, robins, sparrows, squirrels, a confused groundhog, and that darned cat again. My daughter sets to work learning about each of the animals: What it eats, whether it’s generally diurnal or nocturnal, whether it’s native to the area, what its Latin name is. This plays into ongoing discussions about how we can create and improve wildlife habitat at home, even in a city.

At the science fair, she proudly stands next to the board she made. She shows off the pictures of the various animals and explains that the camera trap uses invisible light to snap pictures of animals at night. There’s discussion about all of this wildlife being in the middle of the city. She owns the project, surprising kids and adults alike with what she knows and with the fact that she clearly did this by herself. People are astounded by the diversity of wildlife living a quarter mile from our local downtown area. Finally, my daughter delivers what is clearly the best part of every presentation to her elementary school friends.

“Would you like to see the video of the fox peeing?”

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The story was previously published on The Good Men Project.

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About David Davis

David Davis is a husband, father of two, and a conservationist in the Chesapeake Bay watershed. He has worked as a cartographer, and as a project manager, operations manager, and strategist for various applied science organizations. He writes about the value of nature, practicing Christianity, socially responsible business, and STEM workforce development.