As his mother, Stephanie Schuitt, looked on, 7-year-old Jeremy Schuitt stood inside the visitor center Saturday at the Santa Rosa Plateau Ecological Reserve holding and petting a small snake.
“I’m good at holding snakes,” Jeremy said as he looked around.
Jeremy, his mother and his 4-year-old sister, Faith, were among the dozens of adults and children to attend Family Wildlife Day at the reserve.
It is the third year the Santa Rosa Plateau Foundation and Riverside County Regional Park & Open Space District have sponsored the event.
The idea behind holding a family day is to get parents to bring their children to a day outdoors while also giving the youngsters a chance to see various animals, both live and mounted for display. The event also shows visitors what is available at the plateau.
“I’ll give the kids a chance to see the wildlife up close and personal,” said Nancy Backstrand, chairman of the event.
Backstrand said the event has grown since the first year, when only a few people showed up. Last year, she said, about 200 people attended.
This year, the parking lot at the visitor center was packed; cars, SUVs and trucks were parked along Clinton Keith Road near the entrance.
Throughout the event, someone in a Smokey Bear costume wandered through the crowd, greeting children and parents and occasionally posing for photos.
Along with the snake inside the visitor center, there was a turtle, opossum, savanna monitor lizard, bearded dragon lizard and a raccoon, along with displays of bats and the a mountain lion that had been mounted.
“We got to pet the bearded dragon,” said 6-year-old Brynna Green, who was at the event with her father, Kellen, her mother, Shelley, and 4-year-old sister, Kacey.
Outside, children could make plaster casts of paw prints, look at display rocks, listen to a storyteller and live folk music or visit with the owners of several hawks and other birds of prey.
Chris Allen of De Luz brought his hawk to educate the public about hawks and how they should be protected from harm.
“Hawks are really cool birds,” Allen said.