TIVERTON -- The creature in the picture stuck to 9-year-old Marissa Maciel's back doesn't live in the water. It has six legs. It can pinch. And it wears its bones on the outside.
What is it?
Marissa made a number of guesses before she came up with the correct answer -- a scorpion.
While the picture didn't cause the children to squeal, many of the live animals in the Roger Williams Park Zoo Creepy Crawly Creatures program did. The zoo's community programs coordinator Tori McNally brought a Madagascar hissing cockroach, an African millipede, a king snake and a bearded dragon lizard.
The traveling after-school program helps children see animals up close and learn about role in the environment. Wednesday's visit to the Community Center on Judson Street was hosted by Tiverton Library Services.
"If we didn't have cockroaches, we'd be up to our eyebrows in garbage," McNally said. "He's the garbage guy in the rain forest."
The cockroach was about the size of the palm of her hand. It grasped her hand and hissed at the crowd of about 70 people in the audience. Hissing is how it protects itself, she explained.
Most of the children came closer as she walked through the crowd with it. Some parents backed away.
"Don't you want to touch it?" Mike Reed asked his 5-year-old daughter, Meghan.
She shook her head and wrapped her arms around his knee for protection.
Billy, the king snake, wrapped its body around McNally's arm for warmth. It doesn't have the "internal furnace" that humans have to keep their body temperature steady, she said.
King snakes are the only ones to eat other snakes. They do not have venom but instead kill by squeezing their prey to death.
All snakes use their forked tongue to smell what's around them. There is more than meets the eye when a snake's tongue flicks in and out of its mouth. The tongue gathers scent in the air which it processes with a special organ when the tongue is retracted back into its mouth.
The children, including Meghan Reed, were given a chance to pet the snake. McNally told the children to use to fingers and only rub in one direction.
"I'm ready to touch the snake, mom," Hannah Cook-Dumas, 7, said.
McNally, however, was on the other side of the room. When Hannah finally touched the reptile, her face scrunched up as if she had just tasted a lemon.
Carl DaPonte was quick to stretch out his hand and touch the pink, gray and black creature. He was the only adult in the front row. His son, Kyle, 8, was less enthusiastic.
"How many seconds does it take for the snake to walk a mile," Kyle asked.
McNally couldn't answer, but she said Billy was a little longer than a yard stick. While placing it in a Bugs Bunny pillowcase, she said it wouldn't get any bigger.
The millipede, however, could get bigger. They can be as long as two feet and as wide as a garden hose. McNally had a baby with her.
Millipedes feel like a wire brush against your skin, she said. It has anywhere from 40 to 400 legs. When its scared, it rolls up into a ball. It didn't appear scared Wednesday afternoon, nor did the lizard, who was named Abraham Lincoln because it has a beard.
"Abe could let go of his tail and then run away from a predator if he wanted to," McNally said. "He'll grown another tail later."
One child yelled, "Now that's cool."
Alisha Pina can be reached by phone at (401) 253-1200 or by e-mail at apinaATprojo.com.
