Calusa Nature Center and Planetarium

With Kathryn, I did my service learning hours (and more) at the Calusa Nature Center and Planetarium - and we loved it!  Not only did we leave there eager to go back, but wanting to tell others about it and bring them along with us every time we visited.  What I really enjoyed about the Planetarium, which I feel really made all of the difference, was the employee's and volunteer's eagerness for us to volunteer, learn, and give them a hand.  They would also love to show off their skills to us, whether it be in snake-handling, animal-feeding, or fact-sharing.  They were also always happy to see us, and always had something for us to do (which is hard to come across when volunteering somewhere).  We prepared food for numerous animals; fed opossums; met a skunk; saw an albino raccoon for the first time; almost gotten my arm eaten off by an enormous pig named Elvis (right after the snake-handler guy Steve talked me into a picture with the pig shown above and to the right); watched children chase baby pigs until they could catch one; threw fish into the mouths of impatient pelicans; surrounded our ankles with ducks, chickens, and roosters; cleared an area out for turtles; handled huge, dead rats to feed to enormous alligators; stood just feet away from a rattlesnake; marveled at birds of prey; and were apart of the mini tours that occur around the time when the animals would be fed... and those were just the types of things we did I could come up with off the top of my head!  It wasn't until an hour or so after we got there on our first visit that I had realized that I had been there before, when I was around 13 or so.  I remember enjoying it, but not being able to experience the things we did during our service learning hours.  We thoroughly enjoyed our time there, and I plan on going back yet again.  Although I probably wouldn't have gone there unless it weren't for IDS 3920, I am glad I did.  I felt like a kid again and I enjoyed getting dirty with the animals.  I highly recommend this place for service learning, and I just hope that a requirement doesn't force my next visit there...