Week 4: ANIMAL NEIGHBORS
This week we were visited by Urban Park Ranger Erinn White who taught us about our non-human neighbors and how they make their homes in a city built for humans. We pet real deer hides and hawk talons, played a game to understand how birds lose their homes to human development, and learned about some of the ways our coexistence with animals can cause problems, like beaver dams in Staten Island causing houses to flood. Ranger Erinn also inspired us with her own story: how she combined her two passions (biology and anthropology) to become a park ranger, and how she now spends her days rescuing animals and educating New Yorkers about, i.e., the harmlessness of raccoons. Naturally, our plays this week were populated by a menagerie of characters. We can’t wait to see which ones get chosen for production!
