My first week of camp is over, and next week will be relatively calm since I will actually only be working at one job (as opposed to three, like the first few days of this week). I do have one little extra bit of work this following week though. I have been asked back to a summer camp at a local church to teach the kids about bugs.

Today, I brought the Water Monitor, and both Jurassic Giants camps got a chance to see him. I'm a little bit more reluctant to let kids get too close to him since he bit me at that birthday party earlier this year. It's better to play it safe. Despite the fact that the kids couldn't closely interact with him, he was popular. They thought it was pretty cool that he eats hotdogs. Our group also got to see a large red-eared slider in the lake. Yet another non-native species blatantly basking in the California sun. Nearby, the large wasp nest by the spillway was missing its lower half. I wonder if kids with rocks are responsible.

Over all, these kids were pretty knowledgable about dinosaurs, but since the average age was 5, they tended to wander and toss rocks and sticks when they thought that I or my camp aide wasn't looking. The two girls felt a bit outnumbered by the eleven boys. One of them kept pointing out that I had hair like a girl, and then trying to braid it at every opportunity. One of the boys needed his hand held whenever we went down paths where poison oak was present. One boy went home with a stomach ache, and then the next day had a nosebleed that dripped all over his jacket. One boy had an obsession with dirt and rocks, and was forever picking up large handfuls of dusty dirt which blew everywhere. He also shouted a lot.

It was a lot of fun though. On one of the windy days I gave up trying to do any activities involving paper, and ended up just throwing handfuls of shredded newspaper in the air and having the kids chase it like velociraptors chasing prey. I haven't yet come up with an activity to illustrate how ambush predators hunt, but I'm working on it.

Next week should give me a chance to catch up on sleep.