In times past, it was common for a science teacher to take their school kids to the zoo for an excursion. However these days it is preferanble to use one of the travelling mobile zoos or school wildlife shows instead. This is because an excursion is both time consuming and costly and most of the effort is spent getting the kids to and from the venue, rather than spending wuality time learning.
With a wildlife incursion instead, there is no fees for the buses to and from the venue and no time wasted getting the kids to and from the venue. Furthermore, the lesson can be incorporated into the usual school timetable and with minimal disruption to the schedule of the relevant students, or for that matter the others at the school who may lose a teacher for the day if they go an excursion off the campus.
There are many different kinds of school wildlife shows on offer these days and in a big city like Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, teachers are spoilt for choice. Companies bring birds of prey, sea animals, butterflies, all kinds of mammals and marsupials, such as quolls, tasmanian devils, penguins, wallabies, wombats, kangaroos and koalas, as well as minibeat insects, frogs and more.
The downside with most mobile zoo kind of incursions is the fact that most wild animals can only be shown and not handled by the kids. It simply isn't possible to hand out 20 parrots to a class full of kids to hold and expect all the birds to come back in one piece and with a minimum of fuss. By contrast, this is exactly what can and does happen with a school reptile show, where all the kids can and do get to hold the animals at the same time.
A hands-on reptile incursion is not only hands on and educational, but also totally safe.
Bites can and do happen, but as the animals are all non venomous, there is nothing to worry about except for a bit of blood.
What is far more common is kids getting defecated on, and when this does happen most people treat it as a joke.
Nothing will set a crowd of kids laughing quicker than when a python sprays urine into a student's mouth!
The snake handler and his kids school incursion shows in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, are always a big draw card and due to their heavy demand at times like science week, education week and similar such times of the year, should be booked well in advance if you want to secure a date and time of your choice. He can be phoned on this number: 03 98123322.
As would be expected, they do get very busy as everyone wants to have the snake handler and the reptile incursion man at their primary or secondary school, so the general advice is to make the booking for the best reptile show incursion company before you let the kids know who is coming.
Oh, and make sure you have a few spare cameras and photographers available besides letting the kids use their mobile phones on this special day of learning, as you’d be crazy not to get memories of your reptile incursion as well!