New animal ambassadors at Washington County Conservation

AINSWORTH — The Washington County Conservation Center has three new team members, none of them human.

Following the death of the county’s former animal ambassador — a western fox snake named Mama — in 2024, Naturalist Megan Jorgensen said staff went looking for new reptilian representatives.

And after a convoluted chain of potential new animals, the center now has three. A fox snake, an albino corn snake, and a 42-year-old box turtle.

“The goal of these ambassadors is to educate the public, a big part of it is taking them into the classroom,” Jorgensen said. “It provides an opportunity for the public, as well as students, to get up close and interact with these animals in a safe environment … if it weren’t for nature centers, the likelihood of people encountering a turtle or a snake in a non-wild setting is pretty low.”

Two of the animals — the corn snake and turtle named Medusa and Tiki, respectively — are former pets whose owners could no longer take care of them. The fox snake, named Herman, is a juvenile found slithering across a DNR staff member’s stove.

Any hands-on experience with the animals offers profound perspective, according to Jorgensen, who said she was afraid of snakes until working with them at the conservation center.

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“Prior to coming here, I never would have held a snake or touched a snake, I just had this irrational fear,” she said. “And since I’ve started here and I’ve become more educated on them, it’s helped me get over my fear a little bit.”

Jorgensen said the animals were handled about once a week in the county’s care, which helps them adjust to interactions with humans.

That preparation makes them easy to handle. Visitors to the conservation center are welcome to hold the snakes, with supervision, as are some older students when they’re brought into schools.

While snakes are predators, Jorgensen said they made ideal ambassador animals. The reptiles are fairly docile, largely because they’ve evolved to carefully identify and size up any threat or prey before picking a fight.

“When I’m holding Herman, he can tell, ‘First of all, you’re a human. And second of all, you’re larger, compared to me,’” she said. “So he doesn’t have that instinct to eat me, or fight … they still have that predator instinct when it comes to food, but they’re able to determine what’s food and what’s not.”

The two former pets are not quite representative of Washington County’s native fauna. While Tiki’s age makes it hard to identify the specific type of box turtle, it’s not one known to exist in the wild in Washington County, or possibly even in Iowa. And while Washington County is home to many corn snakes, an albino like Medusa was bred for domestication, and likely wouldn’t survive if released.

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Still, Jorgensen said the non-native ambassadors offered insightful lessons of their own.

“It’s still valuable to have them as ambassadors just because … it allows us to explain the difference between native species and non-native species, and why you can’t release non-native species back into the wild,” she said. “That’s definitely an issue that is important.”

It’s also worth noting that the animal ambassadors are used to working with humans.

Jorgensen said interactions with the reptiles weren’t representative of those with wild animals less accustomed to people. She regularly reminds county residents to keep their hands off of wildlife they encounter outside the conservation center.

“Any time you come into contact with a wild animal, or if you find a wild animal, it’s always best to just leave them be,” she said. “It is against the law to just bring them inside as pets. We have special permits that allow us to have these animals in our possession, because those wild animals are better off in the wild.”

Comments: Kalen.McCain@southeastiowaunion.com