Anyone who has ever packed a suitcase can relate to the adage, “When in doubt, leave it out.” In fact, an experienced traveler once told me that, when packing for an extended trip, she lays out everything she thinks she’ll need, then goes back and removes one of everything—one less skirt, one less pair of pants, one less trashy novel. She eases her doubts about taking too much stuff, and winds up with a suitcase of a manageable size and weight.
If only it were so easy to pack up a Nature Department.
That’s right, the St. Charles Park District naturalists are on the move. Our new home, the Hickory Knolls Discovery Center, is substantially complete. And while it is still a few months before we’ll be ready to open (mark your calendars for our Grand Opening April 30th) we’ve been steadily preparing for some time.
This week we began packing. And that’s when the doubt set in.
While some decisions are fairly straightforward—all school program supplies will be making the trip, as will summer camp gear—there’s an awful lot of, um, stuff, that needs to be carefully evaluated to gauge its potential for future use.
The beaver chips (“crumbs” of wood left after a beaver felled a tree) in a cup on my desk, for instance, are a great interpretive tool. You can actually see the beaver’s teeth marks! But chips of this sort are relatively easy to find. Should these make the trip? Don’t know.
Ditto for the dish of zebra mussels harvested, sadly, from our own Fox River. And the stack of native mussel shells, all with chips or chunks missing. And the heaps of “parts”— bones, rocks, exoskeletons and insect wings—that we’ve found or had given to us over the years.
Luckily, most of these things, should they not make the cut, can be recycled in the Native Plant Garden.
We’ll also be doing a considerable amount of regular recycling, toting lots of old papers, boxes, bottles and cans to the recyclables dumpster. We’ll also be bringing several boxes of old books to be recycled through Kane County’s book recycling program. (This, incidentally, is a great service you might want to take advantage of if you’ve got lots of books or electronic equipment you’re no longer using. Drop-off dates are the second Friday and Saturday each month, and the time is 8 a.m. to 12 p.m. Place is the Kane County Circuit Clerk’s Office, 540 S. Randall Road, St. Charles.)
But then there are the real tough calls, like the birdfeeders that have been not only used, by the Pottawatomie Park birds, but also abused, by the Pottawatomie Park raccoons. These items are functional, but barely, and are no longer suitable for public display. Plus, the fine folks at Kane County Audubon have graciously offered to donate brand-new feeders for use at our brand-new building.
There’s also the matter of The Raccoon. This taxidermied fella has been around a long time, and looks it. His fur, long exposed to the UV rays from sunny windows and fluorescent lights, has faded to a very unnatural shade of brown. His eyes, I believe, were never right to begin with; they seem too small, and are the wrong shade of brown. Plus his fur is a little ratty, and he’s missing a chunk of tail. He’s big, too. To dispose of him would be difficult, and maybe even illegal.
Which I suppose brings us back to the original line of thinking, “When in doubt, leave it out.”
I doubt we will be using the birdfeeders, broken as they are, so off to the dumpster they’ll go. And as for the raccoon… Maybe we can donate him to a worthy cause, like an Olde Taxidermy Museum. Or enter him in a contest, like America’s Got Taxidermy.
But I doubt it.
Pam Otto is the manager of nature programs and interpretive services for the St. Charles Park District. She can be reached at potto@stcparks.org or 630-513-4346.