@Herpetologyguy Has Been Prepping for Halloween!

You've all probably been wondering, "man, where has @herpetologyguy been all week?" (I'm sure no one has been wondering that but I like to pretend I was missed!). I've made a couple of appearances on steemit this week, mostly in @papa-peppers Selfie Contest, but overall my time this week has been devoted to preparing for Halloween!

Halloween is definitely one of my favorite holidays, if not my top favorite. Maybe that's because I get to flex my creative muscle a little more through some of the decorations and costumes that I make. Each year, our museum hosts a Halloween event for families with children who are 12 and under. It's your standard zoo/museum gig; kids can come for a night of trick-or-treating, crafts, games and live animals shows, as well as check out what our animals do at night! The museum itself is split into different sections and decorated and staffed accordingly; we have our fairy-tale kingdom, pirate cove, enchanted forest, dinosaur discovery, jellyfish hall and a number of other themed areas. For the fifth year, I was fittingly put in charge of setting up our own area: Creepy Crawlies. I thought it would be cool to share some photos with you guys of the set-up process and the final product (and show off some of my handiwork!)! I apologize for the quality of some of the images; these were taken with my phone camera.

Tuesday:

We got access to the laboratory where Creepy Crawlies would be around noon on Tuesday, after the last class had let out. With the event opening to the public on Friday afternoon, that gave us roughly four days to decorate the room and prepare exhibits for our live collection. On paper, it probably sounds pretty easy; four days to decorate a single room is surely more than enough, right? Well, like everything at our facility, there is a catch: we have to attend to the live animal collection each day before we can even think about decorating. Our department cares for about 150 individual animals on a daily basis; after feeding, cleaning and medicating is complete, we will be luck to have more than a couple hours to work on our exhibit area. So, you know, no pressure.

A classroom can be an unnerving environment for a kid, but it doesn't really have that "creepy-crawly" feel to it. In order to transform the laboratory from boring classroom to awesome Halloween fun, we began by putting up fake walls to create a sort of forest/jungle theme. The back half of the room was walled off with sheets that have been painted to look like stone, and the remaining three walls were covered in camouflage netting.

It looks a bit ugly right now, but trust me, the final effect works!

Fortunately, we already had the sheets painted from previous years, so we didn't have to worry about painting these.

Wednesday:

We actually hit the ground running pretty hard, and got most of the room covered in netting and sheets on Tuesday. With the help of a few volunteers, we were able to get the remainder of the room covered and ready to start decorating. Our next primary focus was lighting; we wanted it to be slightly darker in our room, but because the event is billed for 12 and under, it can't be scary. In order to achieve a safe and friendly light level, as well as some cool visual effects, we employed the use of red, green, blue and yellow floodlights, as well as a few projectors and disco-balls, that would adequately illuminate the area. Combined with the lit exhibit tanks, this would be plenty of light for everyone to safely enjoy the room and the animals.

Thursday:

Thursday was our last real chance to decorate the room itself before the event. We went about putting up spider webbing, giant bugs, fake mushrooms and other features to accent the room. My favorite is probably our giant inflatable spider; by the time Thursday rolled around, we had completely run out of floor space. In order to display our spider (cuz we can't just not put up a giant spider in the Creepy Crawly room!) I decided that we had to mount the spider to the wall instead. Combined with some spider webbing, it turned out really cool and was a nice addition to the spider area.

The rest of Thursday was spent preparing light fixtures for tanks and hiding cords and wires with camouflage netting. Nothing ruins the effect like exposed extension cords!

Friday:

The big day! Friday was spent running around like mad, trying to get animals put in their temporary exhibits. And we were working up until the very last minute; some snakes were being added to their tanks even as the front desk made the announcement that the first guests were being let in! It was a little hectic, but we completed our work as the first family turned up at our door! Here are some photos of the finished room!

First a "beginning" picture, of course!

Our crafting table where kids could make little spider rings.

Our timber rattlesnake was a little unsure of what to make of the skull!

Over 2,000 kids and parents visited our room and all seemed to have a great time (even if a few of the parents seemed a little hesitant of the snakes and spiders)! We allowed families the chance to touch some unusual exotic animals and even offered a couple feeding demonstrations for our spiders and praying mantis! It was a lot of hectic work to pull off but it seemed like our labor was much appreciated!

Bonus:

In addition to the decorations of the galleries, our aquariums department put in a lot of hard work decorating some of the actual animal exhibits! Here are just a few of our awesome Halloween displays!

Our Salt Marsh Exhibit

One very photogenic lionfish!

Our James River exhibit

Our Woodland Pond exhibit...you might be able to just make out the box turtle inspecting the decorations!

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