Where Them Squirrels At?!?

On Tuesday we went on a nice adventure to Tanglewood Nature Center. We had to go on a scavenger hunt around the trails. This was to be a contest and while we weren't told the prize I wanted GLORY!! In the infamous words of Ricky Bobby, if you ain't first you're last! And I wanted to be first!!

I had never been there before, but I have always heard good things, so I was interested to check it out for myself. We all got into groups and got our list of what we needed to find and take pictures or videos of. Then we were off!! The trails were very beautiful and well maintained and not difficult to navigate. We did have to go off the trails a few times to avoid the mud.

We did not have an extremely hard time finding most of the items on our list. We were really surprised that we got to see a few deer because one of the items on the list was an animals... and an animal in motion and because of the deer we got those checked off. We also realized that ants are REALLY fast!!! Trying to get those suckers in a shot was extremely difficult. Sarah got frustrated and just started snapping pictures where the ants were in hopes of capturing one... luckily we did get one :) We really tried to be creative with some of the tasks. For example we needed
to take a picture of something red. We did take a picture of a red sign, but we came across a red wood tree, so we took a picture of it and decided to use that as our something red. For our something blue, Sarah took a picture of me sitting on a fallen tree and used a certain filter that enhanced the blue in my jeans, so that was an option for our something blue. Even though my jeans weren't exactly a part of nature, we were being one with nature, so it was an interesting twist.

 A squirrel and a chipmunk were both on the list and we were having a really hard time finding ANY. There are always an abundance of squirrels on campus, but not a one was insight. So, I decided to use one of my many special talents to help us out. I have the lovely gift of being able to call squirrels and chipmunks without an actually call (I won a raffle one time because of this awesome skill). I started doing the call through out our walk, but apparently there weren't any nuts in these woods worth finding. We saw only TWO chipmunks the entire time and NO squirrels. We got a shot of one of the chipmunk, but we were squirreless.

I am REALLY competitive and wanted to win!! We couldn't find a few items on the list, so we decided to get creative. Sarah made sure that all our pictures had an artistic edge to them, so even if we couldn't find some items we would have an edge as to the quality of the pictures. One of my brilliant ideas had to do with a very odd item on the list. We needed to find a baby...that's all it said. We had no clue how to find a baby in the woods. At first we were thinking of a small child in the woods. I continued to ponder how on earth we were going to find this item. So, I thought why not take a picture of a small plant or tree that was growing. Technically that is a baby. For the other items we couldn't find we headed to the main building. Inside in the gift shop and in their animal exhibit we found our missing items and crossed off everything on the list!!! I could almost taste the victory.

We didn't have a chance to find out if we won because we didn't have class today :( While I love a good day off and sleeping in
I wanted that victory. I guess we will never find out who the championship group was or what the prize was, but in my heart our group was definitely the winner!!

If you are interested in going to Tanglewood some basic information about the facility can be found on their website, but here are some quick facts. It has been in operation for 40 years. It is free to walk the trails and to go into the museum and gift store. You can become a member of Tanglewood. Along with the hiking trails there is a pond, a pavilion, a nice garden and the building inside has lots of taxidermy and live animals for everyone to check out and learn more about nature!


Photos courtesy of Sarah Hammer'13 and creativecommons.com. All other information copywrite of Logan Tallmadge'13