Wildlife Center of Virginia Blog

I have gained an immense amount of knowledge here in only six short weeks of being an Outreach Extern. While the information about education ambassadors and handling is a large portion of this, I have also learned about the Center’s overall atmosphere …

There is a culture here that is hard to explain but undeniably present. The people are light-hearted, friendly, and passionate about the Center’s mission and the work they do on a daily basis. As part of the outreach team, I am working to translate this aura into words to convey the Center’s passion to the public.

Sometime in May of 2010, I began feeding a group of small feral kittens in my yard. They waited on my porch to eat every morning, and again before dark. I tied string to various toys and threw them into the yard, pulling it back slowly, playing with them. I couldn't touch the kittens - they would run if I got close. Months went by …

Ask me a year ago what I thought of snakes, or even just mention the word “snake”, and I would recoil and tell you how much I hated them! I’m happy to say a lot has changed in a year; education, exposure, and a few different one-on-one experiences worked to change my deeply-rooted hatred of snakes.

I can still picture myself last summer, sitting in the education office of an aquarium in North Carolina, perusing the pictures and stories of education animals on the Wildlife Center of Virginia’s website. After my Education Intern experience at the Aquarium at Pine Knoll Shores, I was positive that my place in this wonderful world of wildlife was in conservation education.