Week 2 at the Desert Museum

During this week at the desert museum, I got to meet a very handsome gentleman. He’s very charming, he loves to chit chat with me in the classroom, and gives me a chirpy, “hello, how are you?” almost every time I see him. Ms. Robin keeps telling me that he has a “thing for brunettes,” in her own words, and I’m starting to think he likes me! And of course, he had just the cutest name: Luca!

Who’s a pretty bird? Luca is!

But in all seriousness, Luca is a lovely bird to work with. He’s from the museum’s interpretative animal collection, where they keep all the animals who are regularly handled and brought outside of their enclosures for purposes of teaching the public. During this week I helped Ms. Robin with several classes, both involving Luca!

On Tuesday, Ms. Robin and I went on an outreach program at Hiaki High School, located on a Yaqui reservation. She did a presentation on pollination to a class of seniors, using desert tortoise, bat, and military macaw for her examples. The students enjoyed it, there were plenty of people pulling out their cellphones to take pictures, participating in the presentation, and observing the animals. It was a little weird, though, assisting in the educational program when all these kids were my age or older. I’m only used to helping out with small children, so it was a different experience.

Thursday held another education program, this time on-grounds and for a class of elementary school students. This on was completely focused on birds, featuring an American kestrel, a barn owl, and again, the lovely Luca. During these presentations, I mainly served as an assistant. I lack the training to actually handle the animals, so Ms. Robin does much of the work by museum regulation. Still, I was able to help by setting up supplies, explaining confusing concepts to the students and answering some questions.

Lastly, here’s this week’s sketches.