On August 12, the Naturally Wild Swap Shop opened in the Children’s Zoo. The Swap Shop is a place for kids to take items they have found in nature and trade them for other natural items.
There are certain steps to this process, along with some rules, so I decided to go through the process and help future swappers get an idea of how it works.
Along with my birthday present, my mother-in-law sent a collection of natural items she had found (and a few of my husband’s that had been laying around her house). I chose three to start with – and here is one of those rules, limit three items per trade. So if you have a bunch of stuff, you’ll have to trade more than once!
The first step is to find an item. Done. If you are swapping, keep in mind that there is a list of things that will not be accepted. Most of these have to do with state and federal laws. For example, there are a lot of laws that protect birds, so nothing bird-related is accepted, including nests, eggs, and feathers. We also don’t want people stripping our trees clean, so nothing is allowed from Zoo grounds. You’ll have to collect before you come.
The items I have chosen are: a bag of pine cones from an evergreen tree, two dead cicadas, and a collection of tiny sharks’ teeth.
The second step is to learn as much as you can about the item. You get more points for your item if you know what it is and something about it. Here’s how I started, and what I found out, for each item.
Cone and needles from a Norway Spruce
I started with the pine cones, because we have a field guide to trees on our bookshelf at home. If you don’t have a field guide laying around, you can always check out your local library. Flipping through the images of cones, I thought I might have a Norway Spruce on my hands. I read the description in the book and found out that this tree is introduced, meaning that it is not originally from the US, and is used as a landscaping tree in the north. We probably don’t have any here in Texas, but the tree these came from is in Indiana. I also looked at some related trees, and decided that these cones are definitely from a Norway Spruce.
Dog-day cicadas
I don’t have an insect field guide, so I had to go to the internet to identify the cicadas. I found this helpful website: BugGuide.net . These cicadas are Tibicen pruinosis, a fairly common yearly cicada sometimes called a dog-day cicada. It was pretty hard to identify them to start; I used a very scientific dichotomous key to get it down to two genera (the first word in the scientific name) but you may have to just look through pictures. Pay attention to the tiny details – my cicadas looked a lot like other cicadas, but the “cloudy Z” on their wings and the white spot on their backs were the telltale signs.
For the shark’s teeth, I already knew that they were sifted from the sand on a beach in North Carolina. As I discovered by some internet browsing, identifying shark teeth is very difficult. There are several websites that can help, but I decided to forego the extra points this time.
So I have 6 Norway Spruce cones, two Tibicen pruinosis cicadas, and some mystery shark teeth from North Carolina. The Naturally Wild Swap Shop is open Wednesday through Saturday, so I’ll have to wait until tomorrow for the next step: bringing in the items.
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Ya. I also visited to the bugguide.net…. It is so nice… Of course I also read that identifying shark teeth is very difficult.
by thoi trang