Hundreds of students attend educational event
Students recoil and hold their noses as Lauren Holder from the Luzerne Conservation District offers to let them smell the kind of ‘stinky water’ that she uses to lure mosquitoes into a trap. A mosquito will be attracted to water that smells like human perspiration in ‘an old gym bag’ as an ideal place to lay eggs, she explained, because the larvae will have bacteria for nourishment after they hatch.
Mary Therese Biebel | Times Leader
Master Gardener Coordinator Jill Baer, at right, invited youngsters to take turns using hand-held garden cultivators to dig into dead logs and see what they would find.
Mary Therese Biebel | Times Leader
Retired DCNR environmental education specialist Diane Madl and John Maday from the Riverfront Parks Committee share information with young visitors about how long it might take a shoe, an aluminum can, Styrofoam and other objects to decompose.
Mary Therese Biebel | Times Leader
Julian Maza from the Pennsylvania Department of Conservation and Natural Resources, Bureau of Forestry, at right, shows students from the Wyoming Valley West School District that a boxelder tree in Wilkes-Barre’s Nesbitt Park has compound leaves.
Mary Therese Biebel | Times Leader
Some of the kids took a step back, some recoiled, and some pulled the necks of their shirts up over their noses — anything to try to forget the smell of the stinky water a conservation specialist had invited them to sniff on Tuesday morning at Wilkes-Barre’s Nesbitt Park.
The stinky water was part of a trap for mosquitoes, Lauren Holder from the Luzerne Conservation District told the students, and while humans might agree it smelled bad, a mosquito would consider it an indication of a good place to lay eggs, a place rich in bacteria.
“I’d say it smells like an old gym bag,” Holder said, explaining the mix contained lactic acid, which is a compound found in human perspiration — and that’s why it might seem bugs are extra interested in you when you’re sweating.
“You mean we smell like that?” the kids muttered to each other. “Yuck.”
The table where Holder talked about mosquitoes and ticks was one of several information stations set up Tuesday morning in Nesbitt Park, between the Market Street and Pierce Street bridges, where the Riverfront Parks Committee sponsored “Nature Discovery Day Along the Susquehanna River” for fourth through eighth graders.
About 500 students attended, Riverfront Parks Committee executive director John Maday said.
And Wyoming Valley West teacher Lora Seesock said she was glad to see the students enjoying the outdoors after recently completing the standardized Pennsylvania System of School Assessment (PSSA) tests.
Her students were among the first to take a guided nature walk into the forested area along the Susquehanna River, led by forester Julian Maza of the Pennsylvania Department of Conservation and Natural Resources, Bureau of Forestry.
Uprooting a slender plant, Maza held it up and asked the students if he had just done something wrong.
Their consensus was yes. “You killed it!” the kids said.
Actually, Maza told them, in this case, it was good to remove the plant, known as garlic mustard, because it was a non-native, invasive species.
There were plenty of native species around, including sugar maple trees, which have a simple leaf, and box elder trees, which have compound leaves, each consisting of several leaflets.
Meanwhile, back near the bridges, Penn State Master Gardener Jill Baer was encouraging youngsters to take turns using hand-held cultivators to dig into some decaying tree branches.
“We’re talking about decomposition, to see what they can find,” she said, noting beetles, moss and fungi were in the mix. Some of the wood had signs of damage from an insect known as the Emerald Ash Borer, so those limbs would have been from an ash tree. Other branches “are too far gone to identify,” Baer said.
Back at the insect station, Holder was advising kids to check themselves for ticks after they had been outdoors.
“Check all over,” she said. “Check behind your ears and under your armpits. Have somebody look through your hair.”
Ticks can be so tiny in their nymph stage, she said, it’s like looking for a poppy seed. Holder had, in fact, brought poppy seeds along to sprinkle onto animal pelts so youngsters could practice looking for something that small.
At another station, Diane Madl, who retired from Nescopeck State Park last year, and Maday talked to students about how long it might take various discarded items to decompose in a landfill.
“How long do you think it would take for this aluminum can?” Madl asked, holding up a soda can.
“Two months?” one child said.
“Five years?” said another.
“Two hundred to 500 years,” Madl said, explaining that was why it would be good to recycle the can and let it be transformed into a new product rather than putting it in a landfill.
While a leather boot, which contains some natural components, might be decomposed in 50 years, most other items would last much longer.
“How long do you think Styrofoam will last?” Madl asked.
“One hundred years?” a girl suggested.
“No one really knows,” Madl said, suggesting it would be a very long time, indeed.
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