Opossums and other suburban 'pests' really aren't, children learn at Seaford museum

Dennis Fleury believes you should be thanking your neighborhood opossums rather than cursing them.

Opossums, often viewed as a nuisance, actually help prevent disease by eating live rats, dead birds, cockroaches and other animals that could harm humans, said Fleury, who on Sunday led a "Thank Goodness for Animals" event at Tackapausha Museum and Preserve in Seaford.

"This is the most beneficial animal to have in your backyard," Fleury told the more than 75 children and adults packed into the museum theater.

Children shrieked, smiled or laughed as Fleury, the museum director, and animal caretaker Ryan Hanrahan took Sydney the opossum, Walter the crow and Zizu the corn snake around the room.

Laila Olson, 5, took one look at the red- and copper-colored snake that Hanrahan had draped around his arm and exclaimed to her mom, Rebecca Olson, "I'm not going to touch him!" But after seeing other kids pet the snake, the Seaford girl worked up the courage to slowly move her hand toward the thin end of the reptile and gently feel it.

Corn snakes, Fleury explained, got their name because some slither through cornfields in the Midwest. They're a form of natural pest control because they eat mice that munch on farmers' crops, he said.

The loudest kids' screams weren't for the snake but for Woody the turtle, after he wet a chair.

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The museum has a monthly wildlife program. Sunday's gratefulness theme -- timed for Thanksgiving weekend -- emphasized that misunderstood animals, such as opossums and crows, are important parts of the suburban ecosystem.

Fleury told the children that many animals shared characteristics with humans.

"Young kids have to start off with empathy for wildlife," Fleury said after the presentation. "When they grow up with empathy, they become stewards of nature instead of destroyers."

Jocelyn Roth, 8, of North Bellmore, picked up on the message.

"We've got to be thankful for animals and let them live," Jocelyn said, when asked afterward what she learned from the presentation.

Parents learned from the presentation as well. Suzanne Calo, 37, of Roslyn Heights, said she never appreciated opossums until Sunday.

"I thought that they're in the way, and you see their tail and it looks like a rat's, so you get scared," said Calo, who brought her two daughters to the program.