Poop: Gateway to a World of Science

By C.J. Hirschfield

You know what they say about business success: “Always listen to your customers.”

At Children’s Fairyland, we’re always listening. And what do we hear our customers talking about? Poop.

"Everyone Poops," a favorite in Fairyland's Reading Room.

Feces is fascinating when you’re 2, 3, 4, or 5. And let’s face it, it’s pretty fascinating to parents, too.

Which is why we’re designing two new science programs featuring animal defecation.

We’re taking it slowly, because we don’t want to get it wrong.

At our staff meeting last week, our education director, Teresa DeBerry, reported that our team’s first effort to gather and cast in resin our many animals’ poop was unsuccessful, because unanticipated rain disrupted the hardening process. (Don’t hate me because my staff meetings are so much more interesting than yours…)

But we’ll be trying again, storing the poop in the freezer (which allows to it retain its original color) and buying more resin at Michael’s Art Supply. A “poop cart” to transport the results will makes its debut next month.

Fairyland's animal-poop display, a work-in-progress.

Teresa predicts that the exhibit will be a big hit. “The horse poop was just beautiful,” she says, smiling at the memory. “So full of hay…”

Our Science Alive! animal program includes a visit to an underserved school to interact with and learn about one of our small animals, a trip later that same week to meet our larger animals, and then tickets for the family to return at a later date. For many of our younger city kids, walking into an animal enclosure is a scary experience. Teresa knows it’s important early on to acknowledge the sight and smell of animal poop. “What’s that smell?” she asks the class. Apparently there’s always one kid who yells out “poop!” to the delight of all. It then becomes okay to talk about it, and to learn that: animals poop a lot, they poop everywhere, and their poop is different than ours. An explanation of the digestive process follows shortly thereafter.

To be fair, this isn’t our first venture into poop studies. One of the many age-appropriate books we feature in our Reading Room is Taro Gomi’s hit “Everyone Poops,” first published in English in 1993. The final portion of the 16-page book explains that because all animals eat, they must all therefore defecate. The book ends with rear views of a human boy and six different animals defecating and a reprise of the title: “Everyone poops.”

In Fairyland’s case, “everyone” includes our chickens, rabbits, and lizard, as well as our (thankfully mini) horses, donkeys, goats, and sheep. They’ll all soon have their poop memorialized in the interest of science.

Our poop display will get around. We plan to use it for our school visits, for our “Dr. Doolittle” school field trips, for our “Mystery Week” at camp – campers will match an animal’s poop with the animal – and for our weekend “Animal of the Day” presentations.

Fairyland animal caretaker Melissa Tauber has already had success with poop during field-trip visits. When the kids take a look at the bin she fills each day with animal poop, they’re vocally impressed with the sheer volume.

I like to think that this interest in animal poop will ignite a more general interest in science that will lead “our” kids to pursue this area of study as they grow older.

Like our own Teresa, for example.

She started to tell me about how and why rabbits eat their own poop to aid in digestion, but for me, that was one poop too far. The littlest kids, however, love hearing all about it.
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C.J. Hirschfield has served for 15 years as executive director of Children's Fairyland, where she is charged with the overall operation of the nation's first storybook theme park.