Who visits the playground at night?

Some of the night visitors at the school playground are humans unfazed by fences and gates. They deface the picnic tables, and leave trashy souvenirs from their incursions.


Each morning staff members check the playground for indications of overnight visitors. We clean up the human mess. We pick up the scat left by the gray fox pair and the opossums.

We marvel at the number of worm castings, and the shiny trails of snails on the basketball court. See the dew shining on spiderwebs between fenceposts? See the toad just waking up under the lambs' ear plant?


In art class we are imagining the animal visitors to the playground when no humans are around. The children loved this idea, and it fits nicely with Halloween.



© 2009 Nancy L. Ruder