Today, I returned home to find my kids (Ava (7), Miles (5) and Anna (2)) and the rest of the ‘neighborhood gang’ having a fair to raise money for nature conservation. Sounds suspiciously like a father put them up to this doesn’t it? Well, not directly at least. Let me explain…

The core of our neighborhood gang, made up of about 12-15 kids between the ages of 3 and 11, have been playing together for the best part of the last five years. We have been lucky enough to have some remnant oak savanna behind our house. Here, the kids have played hide-and-seek, knights and princesses, and caught butterflies, snakes (one particularly large bull snake I remember), newts, and beetles -and a host of other insects. They’ve seen life (a chickadee nest in our front yard) and death (sadly, the carcass of great horned owl that turned up one day – much to many parents’ chagrin). Three species of owls live back there, and one Christmas day some bobcats wandered into our tiny postage stamp back-yard from the savanna. At night, the coyotes howl – we think to trumpet their triumphs at catching the cottontails that take refuge in the hawthorns. Of course, the land is home to many Anna’s and rufous hummingbirds.

Three weeks ago, the machines started coming to turn the oak land into a housing development. First, they cut down the trees. Now they are building a road. Before long, there will be a multitude of new houses. This is affecting my own kids far in a far more profound way than I expected – particularly in a generation growing up with iPhones and video-games. I’m not even sure that they currently know how much they will lose once the lawns start being planted.

So, this was the motivation for the fair — to raise money for nature research and conservation! They set up vinegar and baking soda volcanoes, bead necklaces, bracelets, paper cranes, sand art along with other games. The neighborhood came in droves and paid out money to the gang in 20 cent increments that totaled $9! Not exactly a hefty research budget, but the most important funding that has been raised that I can remember. A symbol of how attachment to nature can motivate kids to do amazing things. Who knows, maybe this is the beginning of a neighborhood science & nature gang. $9 should buy quite a few hummingbird feeders! Maybe that will stop them from stealing my carrots…

MGB