Hello, everyone! My name is Ranger Elsie, and thank you for joining me
today for our virtual Junior Ranger program. Now, Shenandoah is home to all kinds of critters,
big ones, small ones, fast ones, slow ones, blue, brown, slimy, fuzzy; you name it, we've got it!
Some of them you might have heard of before like the black bear, or maybe the white-tailed deer.
Some of them you might want to see like a beautiful monarch butterfly, or a red cardinal. But
today we're going to be talking about some of the lesser-loved creatures here in Shenandoah National
Park--the ones that I like to call the unhuggables! Not just because you might not want to hug them,
and honestly, we should be respectful of all wildlife and give it enough space, but also because
they can't hug you! So what animals don't have arms or legs? Birds have legs, but wings instead of arms.
Spiders have eight legs, but no arms. So who are the unhuggables? To introduce our first friend
I'm going to give you a few clues. So they're very important to soil health. They can eat
one third of their body weight every single day, and they can dig as deep as six and a half feet--
about the height of my friend Pete right here. Who am I talking about? The mighty earthworm! Pink, slimy
and wiggly...worms aren't usually that big, only a few inches long, but they do have a lot of heart.
In fact, they have five of them! Earthworms have five hearts throughout their bodies. Now, other
than being something to throw at someone on the playground, (which really you shouldn't do
because it's not very nice to the worm, or the person who you're throwing it at!) earthworms do
a very, very important, but dirty job. Earlier I said that earthworms are vital--they're really
important to keep our dirt or our soil healthy. But why do we care? Can dirt even get sick?
So I'm not talking about healthy soil like our soil or our dirt can catch a cold, but
soil needs to be healthy because, in that sense, it needs to be full of nutrients. Now,
plants, they need nutrients to be able to grow just like you and I need vitamins and minerals
to grow up big and strong. Our earthworms, they make sure that our plants have the soil that they need--
all of those tasty nutrients because healthy plants need healthy soil. Without healthy soil,
we wouldn't be able to grow any of the tasty foods that we want to eat. Now, who would have
thought without earthworms we wouldn't be able to have spaghetti for dinner or chips as a snack?
Underneath the ground, worms dig around and eat dirt. They get all the tasty nutrients they need
from buried plant parts like leaves and roots. As they move around, they bring all of those yummy
nutrients up to the surface so the plants can reach them. Have you ever tried to reach a really
tall shelf to get the candy jar, but your arms just aren't long enough? These plants are doing the same
thing but instead of reaching up their roots are stretching down to try and get those nutrients
That's where our worm friends come in, just like my tall friend Pete right here, to help these plants
reach those nutrients just like Pete helps me reach that candy jar. Our first friend was slimy
and squiggly; our next friend is scaly and slithers. I'm sure you guessed right! Of course, we're talking
about snakes. Now a lot of people are really afraid of snakes. But why? Are they mean and nasty?
Do they like to hunt people? Do they enjoy the occasional tasty treat of the unsuspecting hiker?
No! No, snakes are actually pretty afraid of people, and to be honest,
a human being--a person--it's a little bit too big of a meal for a snake to swallow. Because they also
can't choose their food, most snakes actually have to swallow whatever they're eating whole.
And, really, they are trying to avoid people. Most of the time snakes are just minding their
own business, which is fair. I would also be scared of a huge mystery creature who was stomping around
right where I was living. Now, all snakes are carnivores. That is true. They only eat meat. But,
we only have two snakes here in our park that are venomous out of the 18 different species.
Which means, if they bite you, then they're going to inject poison into whatever they're hunting.
But most of the time, snakes, like I said, they're not going to be biting humans.
In fact, they're only going to bite someone if they're scared.
And so, really, when we're hiking, we want to make sure that we're being aware of our surroundings,
and very respectful of all of the wildlife we find, especially the snakes. So if you see a snake in the
trail, what you're going to want to do is stop for a second, maybe admire admire how beautiful
it is, but give it enough time and enough space for it to safely move along on its own.
Now, more people in Virginia die from bee stings and lightning strikes than snake bites every year.
So as long as we're careful, and you keep an eye out where you're putting your hands if you sit
down for a picnic or a break on your hike, then we don't have to worry about snakes being dangerous.
In fact, they're really important to making sure that our ecosystem stays healthy and happy.
For our final friend, we're going to play a little bit of a game, so maybe you could
grab something to write with and a piece of paper--some scratch paper. Then try and
follow along and see if you can guess who I am talking about. So this critter has one foot...
one long body...
...four tentacles... Now it actually uses two of those tentacles to see, and two of them to smell.
It does carry its home on its back...
...and this creature has 14,000 teeth! So our first friend was squiggly, the second one was slithery,
and our final friend is slimy! Bringing up the rear, as it usually does in a race, is the snail!
It can be pretty obvious that a snail has been cruising around. Have you ever seen a snail trail?
What does it look like? Maybe not like footprints, but it is a kind of footprint. Keeping with our
theme. snails don't have arms or legs, but they do have one big foot to slide around on. Snails can
glide around on their foot because of the slime, or mucus, they make. We can see the shiny tracks
of the snail on sidewalks, plants, and if the snail hitches a ride on your backpack, we could see it on
you too! It would be a lot faster for that snail to be a passenger on a human or really any other
animal, than for it to go along on its own. Snails are one of the slowest animals on earth, traveling
about .5 inches--half an inch per second, it would take more than a week to travel just over half a
mile, a distance a person could walk in 15 minutes! How far do you have to go to visit a friend? A few
miles? It would take you a whole month to walk two miles if you were really going at a snail's pace!
Snails might not be the fastest critters, but they are incredibly strong. Not only do they
carry their homes around everywhere with them--and they only have one shell for their entire life--
but they can lift 10 times their body weight! Now, if I could do that, I could squat lift a
great white shark or a polar bear! All right, let's see if I can compare my strength to a snail.
All right. Obviously I'm not as strong as a snail, so they win in this round. And snails
have more teeth than either of those predators! Polar bears, they have about 42 teeth. Great white
sharks have about 300, and the snail 14 THOUSAND! Now, luckily we don't have to worry about snail
bites because snails don't even bite. And they're also vegetarians. They actually eat plant matter,
so either growing or decomposing plants, and they scrape their food to be able to eat it.
Now snails are thought of as pests by a lot of gardeners and farmers, because they do like
to nibble on tasty growing plants. But while a tomato plant is the perfect dinner for a snail,
that snail is the perfect dinner for a whole bunch of critters--raccoons, birds, even snakes!
So without these animals there would be a big huge hole in our food web.
And all of those animals that rely on snails, they might go a little bit hungry. So even the least
huggable creatures are important to having a happy and healthy ecosystem. They deserve our care and
respect just as much as the bear and the deer do. We just need to look a little bit past the slime
and the scales to see how much we really do need these incredible critters. Now I hope that you
learned a lot about our unhuggable friends--snakes, worms, and snails--and you're able to appreciate
them a little bit more both here in our park. and in your own backyard! Thank you, everyone! Bye!