James McAndrews Jr.: Great Valley’s Animal Room something to see

A visitor to Modesto Junior College’s Great Valley Museum can see the stars at the planetarium, look at the wide variety of animals that have lived in the Valley, and see the highlights on the surface of Mars at Science on a Sphere.

But the museum also has the Discovery Room, where many reptiles and insects, most of them from the Valley, can been seen. On the other side of the Discovery Room, and out of the public eye, is the Animal Room, where a daily ritual of feeding and prepping the inhabitants takes place.

Taking care of the animals is Loralee Crawford. She is a traveling teacher, animal care technician, docent and volunteer, who spends about two hours a day feeding the denizens of the Animal Room: about 23 in all.

Among those animals are seven snakes, including an albino lavender dwarf snake. Along with the snakes are turtles, tortoise, toads, skink, gecko, tarantula, salamander, cockroaches, walking sticks, an owl and a dove.

With such a wide array of animals an equally wide variety of food is needed to feed them. The tortoise and turtles take fruit and vegetable salads. But the turtles also appreciate finding snails and crickets on their menu.

Crickets are also popular with the skink, gecko, tarantula, salamander and the toads. Toads also have a fondness for worms, as do the salamander and gecko.

Walking sticks need green leaves, the dove likes seeds and greens, and the owl loves mice and occasional chicks. Snakes do their part to depress the mouse population. The fastest way to a cockroach’s heart is to show up for dinner with vegetables.

The new museum’s Animal Room is a major upgrade from the one at the previous location at the corner of College and Stoddard. Simple things like air conditioning that works consistently and a roof that doesn’t leak during the occasional rainstorm are just two of the improvements.

The old room was cramped, but the new museum’s Animal Room is four times larger and provided with more advanced technology that makes life for the residents much more comfortable.

“We also have a washer and dryer to do animal laundry, the old location did not,” said Crawford.

Museum specialist Molly Flemate, “who is the glue that holds the museum together,” had to take the laundry to the laundromat.

The new location also has habitats with ultraviolet lights, timed-control warming lights and adjustable sizing. A new bonus is a full-size refrigerator to store the animals’ food.

Although the animals are kept out of the public’s reach for health and safety reasons, the Traveling Teacher program brings the animal ambassadors to schools for the museum’s Animal Adventures program.

For those who would like to see the animals the museum hosts Story Hour and Live Animal Shows every Friday in rotation from 10 to 11 a.m. For information, call the museum at (209) 575-6196. Contrary to rumors, the animals don’t read during Story Hour. Snails and the tortoise read too slowly, and the snakes like only tales with a heavy emphasis on the letter S. The owl, however, is well-suited to reading Kafka.

This story was originally published June 9, 2015 at 2:05 PM with the headline "James McAndrews Jr.: Great Valley’s Animal Room something to see."