Bathroom reading

In the previous episode regarding our vacation to the Outer Banks, we looked briefly at some of the wildlife in the area, specifically the wildlife that invades your home and leads you on a merry chase until finally, exhausted of its game, leaves and tells all of its friends and relatives where you keep the Oreos.

If you prefer your wildlife, as I do, dead and stuffed and mounted in tasteful displays, with no possibility of its coming into contact with your person or belongings, you can do no better than visit the nature center on the northern end of the islands. The center is a very popular destination with families, particularly on days when it is raining and they cannot go to the beach.

The nature center is filled with helpful signage about the animals on display, and also about humans, such as a dire warning that "More than 250 people in this room at one time is dangerous." Not only is it dangerous, it is highly optimistic as well -- at least based on our visit, during which, despite the inclement weather outdoors, the only living things not swimming around in a tank were Joe and I.

Yet it is evident that the nature center people take their jobs very seriously. Through interpretive displays and a tasteful movie depicting live insects shown at 300,000,000 times their actual size, they attempt to impress upon you how the influx of humans is destroying the Outer Banks, and to urge you that when you go on vacation, you should respect the fragility of the ecosystem and go somewhere else, like Disneyland, where the damage has already been done.

The nature center people feel so strongly about educating visitors on the importance of the ecosystem that your wildlife education continues even in the restroom, at least if you are a female. Here, once you are comfortably settled, you may read, on the back of the stall door, an educational display about the winter habits of snakes. This display is accompanied by several photos of what snakes do in the winter, such as burrowing underground, growing to 900 times their original size, emerging to terrorize people in restrooms, etc.

I do not know what kind of person thinks that a sign about snakes on the back of the stall door in the women's restroom is a good idea. The only sign I want to see about snakes in a restroom is one that says BE ASSURED THAT IT IS PHYSICALLY IMPOSSIBLE FOR A SNAKE TO COME UP THROUGH THE TOILET AND BITE YOU, with perhaps a little drawing of a snake in a circle with a line through it.

Maybe then they would have a shot at getting more people to visit.