Jeff Corwin (2 page)

Jeff says that the moment he discovered the garter snake in the woodpile was the moment he became a naturalist. He realized that he enjoyed studying the natural world, especially animals. Jeff often says that if he had pulled apart that woodpile and uncovered a golf club, he might have become Tiger Woods instead!

The Corwin family also spent a good deal of time visiting Jeff’s grandparents in the town of Middleborough, Massachusetts. Middleborough is located even farther south than Holbrook. And just like Holbrook, Middleborough is a rural area. On these weekend trips to the country, Jeff enjoyed investigating the fields and meadows near his grandparents’ home.

As he explored, Jeff made it his mission to find another snake. And he did! One day at his grandparents’ house, Jeff discovered another garter slithering around outside. This time, he didn’t grab it. He was excited just to have found another creature like the one that had 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 household. Jeff would catch and release the same turtle, year after year.

Jeff’s mother became used to cleaning Jeff’s room and getting up close and personal with his animals. Sometimes a snake would slither out from under a shirt or a squirrel would scamper across the room! There was also an ill-tempered iguana with an injured arm that Jeff’s parents helped nurse to health. The Corwins gave the hurt iguana doses of antibiotics. When the iguana was finally healed, its personality changed. It became so much nicer than when it was hurt, they named it Fluffy!

Throughout the rest of his childhood in Norwell, Jeff’s interest in and love for animals grew only stronger. Animals abounded, and the Corwins’ house eventually became like a zoo. Little did Marcy and Valerie Corwin know, Jeff’s experiences with animals had only just begun.

Once Bitten

For most kids, a snakebite would create a lifetime fear of the slithering creatures. But Jeff Corwin was no ordinary kid. Rather than fear snakes, Jeff decided to learn all he could about them, as well as other animals.

After moving to Norwell, in addition to exploring his wooded backyard, Jeff also spent time at one of the local wildlife centers. Beginning in junior high school, he volunteered at the New England Wildlife Center. The center provides care for sick, injured, and orphaned wild animals. Once the animals are well, they are released back into their natural habitat again.

The New England Wildlife Center was originally located in Hingham, Massachusetts. (The center is now located in Weymouth, Massachusetts.) Hingham is less than ten miles north of Norwell, where the Corwins now lived. Many days after school and on weekends, Jeff would ride his bike to the center. He busied himself caring for animals. He did things like fix broken bird wings and build fiberglass turtle shells for turtles that had been run over by cars. Jeff was learning about animals and helping them survive.

But Jeff couldn’t get enough of animals! He also volunteered at the South Shore Natural Science Center, a museum located right in Norwell. It is a nonprofit organization that educates people about the natural environments of the south shore of Massachusetts. The center has several acres of conservation and recreation land, with meadows, woodlands, and a pond. Jeff spent many afternoons and weekends working there. He helped catalog their collection of animals and maintain their live critters. Jeff also taught classes about nature to other kids. But Jeff never forgot his love of snakes. And according to naturalist Barbara Devine, Jeff always had a snake around his neck when he walked through the door.

Between the ages of ten and thirteen, Jeff also spent time visiting a traveling snake show in his area. The snake show was held at malls and county fairs, among other places. A local biologist named Fred Dodd was in charge of the snake show. Fred brought different types of snakes to display. Every time the snake show was in town, Jeff attended. Eventually, Jeff befriended Fred and was allowed to interact with some of Fred’s snakes. Jeff also helped Fred by doing chores, such as cleaning cages. Fred even let Jeff take a snake home with him sometimes!

At that time, Fred was doing graduate study work in Belize. Belize is a country in Central America that is home to an ecosystem called the rain forest. Fred was in charge of an organization that took teams of researchers into the jungles of Belize to learn about the wildlife there. Jeff was very interested in hearing about these trips. And by the time he was thirteen, he was itching to go along. He wanted to see more snakes!

So Jeff asked his parents for permission to go on one of the weeklong trips to Belize. But Marcy and Valerie Corwin felt that Jeff was too young to go on such a long trip without them. So they said no. But Jeff asked time and time again for their permission. Eventually, his parents agreed that when he was old enough, Jeff could go. But there was a catch: Jeff would have to pay his own way. Marcy Corwin told his son to come back and ask again in a few years when he had earned the money. Jeff took his father’s words very seriously.

For the next three years, Jeff worked hard doing any job that would help him earn money to go to the rain forest. He bused tables at restaurants and even worked after hours cleaning and waxing the floor of a pub. After every hard day of work, Jeff thought, I’m a few dollars closer to getting there.

Finally, when Jeff was sixteen years old, he asked his parents about the rain forest again. But this time, the high school junior was holding a brown paper bag. It contained about fourteen hundred dollars! Jeff had saved every cent he earned.

Jeff had a simple request: he wanted a passport and his parents’ permission to go to Belize with Fred Dodd. Marcy and Valerie Corwin were shocked, and very proud of their son’s determination. They knew it was Jeff’s dream. He had worked hard and earned the privilege of being allowed to go. So that summer, Jeff took a trip to Belize. And it was a trip that changed him forever.

During his time in Belize, Jeff stayed with a research team studying the amphibians, reptiles, and other wildlife of the rain forest. He saw and experienced many animals for the first time. He spent a night in a Mayan village in a thatch house with an earth floor, went exploring at night for snakes and frogs, and swam down a river with toucans and iguanas in the trees hanging over the water. He began to understand just how complicated the rain-forest ecosystem is. Jeff learned what it was like for the indigenous, or local, people living there to interact with nature so closely.

While on that trip, Jeff also had his first experience getting lost in the wilderness. Late one afternoon, Jeff went out exploring by himself. He headed deep into the rain forest, watching the trail in front of him the whole time. After a while, Jeff turned around to trace the path behind him. That was when he realized he was in big trouble!

When Jeff turned to study the path he would use to get back to camp, there appeared to be many different possible paths that he could have just taken. Darkness came quickly, and Jeff was completely lost! Thankfully, he had a headlamp on, so he was not completely in the dark. When Jeff did not return to camp, a whole team of people went out searching for him. But it was about four hours before he was rescued! Jeff learned a valuable lesson, however: when exploring in the woods, always trace the path in front of you
and
the one behind you in order to get back to where you started.

In the rain forest, Jeff felt more like himself than ever before. There was just so much to discover and learn! He knew he needed to go back there as often as possible. For the next ten years of his life, Jeff worked hard to keep paying for plane tickets to return to Belize. But by the time he was in college, he was getting paid to be there! Jeff was leading his
own
research expeditions to the rain forest.

Jeff’s time in Belize made him feel so strongly about conserving the rain forest that he would later spend more than two years combined living and studying there. And because of all his experience and research, Jeff is now an expert in rain-forest animals. And today, he is still in touch with biologist Fred Dodd.

While Jeff had some unusual experiences during high school—not many teenagers travel to the jungle—he also had more typical experiences. Like most teenage boys, Jeff argued with his little sisters and got into some trouble with his parents.

When Jeff was seventeen years old, his parents had to go to a funeral. They gave Jeff permission to borrow their car while they were gone. He was to take his little sister Amy out for some ice cream. As Jeff was backing the car out of the driveway, he and Amy began to argue and tease each other. Amy pulled at Jeff’s hair, and a full-out wrestling match started! But the quarreling siblings forgot one very important thing: the car was already moving.

When Jeff and Amy realized the car was rolling, Jeff panicked. He slammed his foot down on the pedal he thought was the brake. He intended to stop the car. But he accidentally hit the gas pedal, instead. This made the car go flying at a high rate of speed, crashing through a fence. Jeff was finally able to hit the brakes, but by that time, the car was hanging over the edge of the Corwins’ swimming pool!

Amy teased Jeff, “You’re in so much trouble! Mom and Dad are going to
kill
you!” But Jeff managed to drive the car out and park it in the driveway again. When Jeff’s parents came home, they saw the damage to the car and the fence. Jeff was definitely in big trouble! (Even as an adult, Jeff has found himself in trouble driving—this time for getting too many speeding tickets. Some things never change!)

Jeff also had some trouble in school. Like many other kids, Jeff felt like he did not always fit in. Jeff was a little overweight, and sometimes he acted out as the class clown, joking around and entertaining his peers by doing voices and impersonations.

And his clowning around didn’t help his grades. Jeff had a tough time in high school, partly because he was not a very good student. He actually failed high school biology! It’s hard to believe that a famous biologist failed biology as a teenager, but it is true. Jeff did not succeed in a traditional school setting and thought maybe he just was not all that smart.

Luckily, Jeff discovered the drama department at Norwell High School. He performed in musical theater productions and really enjoyed it. His favorite character was the evil Wazir of Baghdad from a musical called
Kismet
. Singing and acting gave Jeff a creative outlet for all the energy he used to spend entertaining the class!