Jeff Corwin by Jeff Corwin Page B

bitten him. From that day forward, every time Jeff visited his grandparents, he would find the same snake and simply watch it.
    For two whole years, Jeff observed the snake’s behaviors. He watched it eat, breed, and prey on other animals. He studied it, sketched it, and collected its molted (or shed) skins. By the time Jeff was eight years old, he had developed a strong bond with the garter snake.
    But then, something awful happened. One day, Jeff sat alone in the yard, quietly observing his garter snake. Suddenly, the snake seemed to come apart right in front of him! Jeff was shocked and horrified to see his beloved garter snake writhing in pain. Its head had separated from the rest of its body, and its mouth was still reaching out and biting. Jeff’s snake was dead in an instant.
    Jeff looked around, confused and upset. He then looked up; over him stood a neighbor holding a garden spade. The neighbor had attacked the garter snake with the spade. He feared the snake would bite Jeff. The neighbor asked Jeff if he was all right. But Jeff was heartbroken and instead of answering, he quickly ran inside to his grandparents, thinking, No, I’m not all right!
    Jeff had just witnessed the most horrible thing he could have imagined. He was shocked by the neighbor’s reaction to the garter snake. He wondered why a person would kill a creature that wasn’t harming anything. He knew that he needed to stop other people from needlessly harming animals out of ignorance and without a justifiable or legitimate reason. That was the day that Jeff Corwin became a conservationist.
    Soon after the death of Jeff’s favorite garter snake, the Corwin family moved. It was the summer of Jeff’s eighth birthday. It was also the year that the Corwins welcomed their third child into the family—Jeff’s youngest sister, Joy. The family of five chose to leave behind the urban bustle of Quincy. They moved to the country to a town called Norwell, Massachusetts. It was a move that suited Jeff’s interests in animals and nature very well.
    The night before the big move, Jeff lay awake, excited. His mind raced with thoughts of living somewhere that would allow him to have all the nature adventures he had ever dreamed of. He knew that, unlike Quincy, Norwell offered woods, marshes, and other places for discovery and exploration.
    The day the family arrived in Norwell, Jeff immediately set off into the woods behind his new house. The woods became Jeff’s classroom, where he worked on his skills as a naturalist. As he was exploring among the pine and oak trees, Jeff found an old, abandoned log cabin with a stone fireplace. The cabin stood next to a small pond and swamp. For the next ten years of his life, Jeff spent much of his time discovering and learning there. He loved all that his new hometown had to offer. He could finally experience all the wildlife he had been longing to see.
    Jeff often found animals—like frogs, turtles, and snakes—while he was out exploring. So he brought these animals home with him to study and learn about them. He and his parents built cages and kept them for a short period of time. While he housed these animals, he learned a lot about biology from studying and observing. But Jeff’s parents had a strict rule that after a few weeks, all critters must be released back to exactly the place where they were found. These animals belonged in the wild, and while it was okay for Jeff to watch them for a short time, they weren’t pets.
    Jeff’s bedroom in Norwell quickly filled with aquariums, terrariums, and cages. Different types of snakes, lizards, reptiles, spiders, and bugs lived in each one. But his bedroom wasn’t the only place these animals would occupy. Jeff would fill the toilet bowl with salamanders, scaring off guests who went to use the bathroom. There was a falcon soaring across the porch, and a gigantic snapping turtle that Jeff had hauled home from a nearby pond. This turtle became a staple in the Corwin