Scar, a rat snake, curled down Steve O’Neil’s arm on Friday, flicking his tongue at the group of awed students at Covenant Presbyterian Church. The kids reached out and touched its black scales, as O’Neil explained how rat snakes help keep down the rodent population.
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“They can eat a lot of mice and rats. He’s better than any cat,” O’Neil said.
He cautioned the students not to touch snakes in the wild. Scar, however, is not dangerous to humans.
“He’s harmless,” O’Neil said. “He’s a harmless animal.”
O’Neil, who works with Earthshine Nature Programs in Lake Toxaway, brought 10 of his reptilian friends to visit with students of the Henderson County Homeschool Association. The program was sponsored by Wild South, a North Carolina organization dedicated to bringing knowledge to people to protect natural resources.
As O’Neil worked to unravel Scar from his arm, he stretched the snake out to his full length, about 6 feet.
“Whoa!” came the exclaim from the crowd of kids.
King, an eastern king snake, also made an appearance. O’Neil gave the kids the lowdown on King, too.
“They can eat rattlesnakes and copperheads and other venomous snakes,” O’Neil said. “They’re not affected by the venom.”
Lizards and other snakes were also part of O’Neil’s crew. Some of the reptiles were rare, like Xavier, an albino rat snake, and Indigo, the blue-tongued skink, native to Australia.
“He is a big lizard,” O’Neil said. “He has a blue tongue and if you watch, his tongue will flick out.”
O’Neil told the children about his Eastern box turtle conservation project and how he tracks the turtles in North Carolina. According to his website, the project involves “following several wild eastern box turtles with mark-recapture and radio telemetry techniques in order to learn more about their habits, habitats and interactions with humans and our domestic animals.”
Through Friday’s program, O’Neil hoped to teach students the importance of wildlife to the ecosystem and about conservation. It helps children learn when they can come face-to-face with live critters they usually only see in textbooks, he said.
Unfortunately, O’Neil increasingly sees more and more children suffering from what’s known as “Nature Deficit Disorder,” a term coined by Richard Louv in his book “Last Child in the Woods.”
“There’s a horrible disconnect between us and nature,” O’Neil said. “I see it all the time. We go outdoors less. So I’m taking the outside world to the inside.”