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| O u r S c h o o l P e t s |
| At SES, "Growing Through Environmental Stewardship" means taking care of our four legged friends...epecially when they are a little down on their luck. Meet Chichi, Chenka, Boomer, and Tuffy; they are the animals taken care of by the fourth and fifth grade students at SES. |
| Meet Chenka and ChiChi. They are the class chinchillas. Chinchillas are very soft and friendly. Their favorite foods are apples and bananas. The most interesting thing about them is that they cannot get wet. They take baths by rolling around in special dust that cleans their fur. |
| Chinchillas and Sugargliders are nocturnal animals. They do most of their playing at night, but still don't mind coming out during the day to have a snack or say hi. |
| This is a sugarglider and his name is Boomer. Sugargliders are very soft and playful but like to hide and sleep during the day. Boomers favorite snack is grapes, and he HATES going to the vets office for a nail trim |
| Boomer has a flap of skin between his front and rear legs that allows him to glide if he had enough of a head start. |
| This is Tuffy; she is an Eastern Box Turtle that was injured by a plow. A blade on the plow accidentally hit the top of Tuffy's shell and made part of it break and push down onto her spine. Tuffy was rescued by Ms. Bost's father, who performed turtle surgery to lift the broken piece of shell up into place. Tuffy had to wear a very small brace and bandage for several weeks. Now Tuffy has a very hard time using her back legs to walk. She tends to use just her front legs and slide the back of her shell along the ground. |
| Although Tuffy is still able to move around and enjoy life, because of her injuries, she cannot be released any time soon. So until she is better, the students at SES give her regular exercise to strengthen her back legs. If you look closely at the pictures, you can see where her shell was broken (in the very middle of her back) by the plow blade. |