The Classroom Menagerie

Kids always enjoy animals in the classroom, within reason.

My ninth graders really bugged me a few weeks about some prospective class members. I had picked up two desktop aquariums from RiteAid for $10 each and set them up in the front of the classroom. Then some of the kids were into checking as soon as they entered the room to see if I had gotten any fish yet. When I put a beta into each tank, I started receiving regular instructions about putting them together and watching them fight.

I think a typical teenager has a little bit of sadism in his/her makeup. They are fascinated when the classroom has a large fish in it, especially if it is fed live food. I once had a gar in a large tank. Watching it grab a goldfish never became old for most of my students. Even a tank with a crayfish (crawdad) was a source of excitement whenever an earthworm was dropped into the tank.

For seven years I kept an albino California king snake in my eighth grade classroom. The only snake that is better to keep in a classroom is a corn snake. Both types tend to be very docile when they are used to being handled, provided they are left alone when shedding their old skin. The corn snake also has such small teeth that it is never a risk. The king snake will eat small mammals as well lizards and other snakes. It is the easiest snake to keep fed. Not only did students enjoy watching it feed after school, many of them also enjoyed handling it. Snakes in the classroom are an excellent way to help kids get over their fears of snakes. It has to be done in a careful manner and is not effective with all students.

Pythons and boas are too big for the classroom and are not native to this country. They don’t belong due to high risk and little actual educational value when compared to corn and king snakes. They also require larger food such as rats, which leads me to another classroom “prisoner”, the small mammal. Nothing stinks worse than a cage of mice, unless it is a cage with rats. They produce large amounts of urine and will stink up a room in no time, even if held in a storage area off of the main room. Students have enough smells to put up without also having to put up with smelly rodents. Having dirty cages is unsanitary and disrupts the educational process.

I used to raise gerbils to feed Leroy (my albino king snake). They don’t breed as fast as mice and need to be fed to the snake when young. But they are native to desert areas and produce small amounts of a pasty urine. Their odor is minimal and the smell is easy to contain. The hardest thing about feeding them to a snake is that they have furry tails as compared to mice with scaled tails, s they “look cute” even though they are close relatives.

When I taught in Pennsylvania I had as many as three tarantulas, one Asian scorpion, and the gar in my room at one time. Students enjoyed them and the only live food was crickets and goldfish. I never handled the scorpion but we had lots of fun with the tarantulas. My good friend, who taught science next door, got carried away. He was studying eastern rattlesnakes in their native environment and was raising some young ones from eggs. He even kept one in his room and often had it crawling on his desk. Once in a while it would bite him. (This was all illegal of course.) It had minimal effect. Then he almost died from a bite from a large adult in the field. After he was back to normal, he still played with the young one. However, when it nipped him again, his resistance had been compromised and he got quite ill. He released all of the young ones near a rattlesnake den and stopped playing with fire. Now he studies less dangerous forms of nature.

Security for any caged animal is important, since the custodians don’t relish coming across a snake, rodent, or large spider crawling around the classroom after dark. They also don’t care for the possibility of salmonella being produced in a dirty reptile tank. So many school districts have shut down classroom menageries and only allow a few fish in a small tank. Liability is a big concern, but so is security and cleanliness along with student allergies.

Being exposed to animals in the classroom is beneficial to students. For many it is their only opportunity to interact with wildlife in a controlled environment. Unfortunately too many teachers “get in over their heads” and create problems. But then there is the exceptional teacher like the one I met in Pennsylvania many years ago who had a menagerie in a specially built section of his high school that contained an alligator, a crocodile, and a caiman as well as up to twenty different kinds of snakes, a number of lizards, and several turtles. Everything was maintained by a herpetology club under his direction. It was a professionally run setup. Not typical to a high school, and most impressive.