Don’t get me wrong. Like most people, I love gifts! Like the Big Wheel I got when I was in Kindergarten. Or the ten speed bike I got in 5th grade. Or my coveted Sean Cassidy, Donny Osmond, and Michael Jackson albums I got for Christmas when I was in 6th grade. But in the past couple of years, as a Science teacher at Corpus Christi, I have received some very “interesting” gifts. In fact, I have stopped asking for these “gifts” because I’m not sure I can handle anymore.
I guess it all started with my cats….. (my two cats actually turn 11 years old today! Wow! That’s older than some of my students!) Cats love to bring gifts to their owners. My two cats are females, and like female lions, they are the hunters. My cats have brought countless mice, birds, lizards, etc. to our family. Unfortunately, many are not in great shape or can be difficult to identify when they bring them and leave at our doorsteps. Sometimes, though, they bring them to play with, and in doing so, may injure them. I feel it is my responsibility to get these critters away from my cats and “save” them. I have even taken birds to Lindsay Wildlife Museum in Walnut Creek because they have a wild animal “hospital” there that will help treat them and release them back to the wild. Thankfully, a bird we took there after being captured by one of our cats, survived. But the cats have caught a few lizards who I “saved” and they became my pets…. 4 of them. Then they caught a salamander that survived and she also became a pet.
Then, one of the most interesting finds…. A skink in my house! The cats were playing with it in the hallway. I had never seen a skink in the wild before, but thanks to my many trips to the East Bay Vivarium and various zoos with my kids, I knew what it was. So now I also have a skink as a pet. Some other interesting animals my cats have caught would be moles, a garter snake and a ring-necked snake. As a Science teacher, it’s great! I can bring them in and they can live in the lab and my students love them!
Then, a couple of years ago, a student brought me a female betta “out of the blue.” Now…. I didn’t need a female betta. I had a male betta on my desk, but if you know betta fish, I cannot put the female with the male…not because of why you think, but because they will fight. So my female betta was put into an extra tank that I just happened to have. Then last school year, same student brings me a scorpion! A scorpion?! Now I really don’t need a scorpion! But, since she brought it in, and I have a container to keep it in, I guess I’ll keep it. Well, the scorpion went home with me and lived all summer at my house, eating crickets and even being “pet sit” by a former Corpus Christi student. Then, scorpion came back to school this year. All good. I even got a black light to shine on the scorpion because scorpions fluoresce! That means they glow under a black light. It’s really pretty cool!
But then Labor Day came along and after the long weekend, I came back into the lab to discover that my scorpion was missing! After some mild panic and checking the cage to make sure all was secure, I was puzzled as to where it went? Did someone let it out? I have “Do Not Open” signs on the cage and it sits next to my desk so students can’t open it. Did it escape somehow after all these months? I decided to use the fluorescent light to see if I could find it anywhere in the cage. Aha! There it was, buried under the dirt and water dish. Phew! I was relieved! I certainly didn’t want a scorpion running around loose in school! So I went about my business until the next day when a stellar 8th grader, who may know more than I do about some things (including scorpions), looks in the cage and exclaims, “The scorpion has laid eggs!” What? No! OMG! Wow! How can this be? Aren’t life cycles of these things fairly short? How could the scorpion have babies? It’s been in there about 4 months now…. alone! Well, after some more research, we learned that scorpions can have gestational periods as long as a year! So I guess she was pregnant when said student “gifted” her to me.
By some miracle, the water dish is clear and we could see the babies, which after researching, we learned will live on the mother’s back up to 3 weeks! There they were, huddled together, opaque/white-colored mini scorpions! Fascinating, but a little creepy! I have gotten used to coming in and checking them each day, and the babies are slowly climbing down from the mother’s back this week and getting some color (they will molt several times before they get their full color). I have yet to figure out what we will do with all the babies, but it may take a trip up to Mt. Diablo to release them back to the wild! So….. that brings me to today. I come into the lab and unpack all my papers and my work onto my desk, and leave the room to go teach. At my first break, I return to find a skull on my desk! No kidding! Must be another gift. I guess I will spend time researching what type of skull it is. Or just consult my stellar 8th grader. Pretty cool specimen for students to observe, but again, a little creepy! Must be getting close to Halloween? I wonder what next week will bring?
-Gina Gialis
(4th-8th grade Science collector Teacher)
September 24, 2018