Gophers, armadillos and snakes (oh my) can all be found in downtown Little Rock with a trained eye, according to Lauren Marshall.
Marshall, an educator at the Witt Stephens Jr. Central Arkansas Nature Center, led a class on Saturday called Fantastic Beasts Found Downtown.
She was inspired by Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, a 2016 film that extends the Harry Potter universe to follow Newt Scamander, a magical zoologist.
Marshall told her audience of young and eager beast seekers that the animals found in the River Market District will "shock and amaze you."
All the creatures she described can be spotted along the less than half-mile stretch between the Nature Center and the Clinton Presidential Center, bordering the Arkansas River.
"Down here, we have burrowing beasts," Marshall said before passing around an oblong armadillo skull. Children and parents worked the jaw open and shut.
Armadillos, with their pointed noses and digging acumen, can dig deep underground. And "they don't have teeth capable of crunching because they eat soft things, Marshall said.
Next up were beasts with fantastic teeth. Beavers along the riverbank gnaw on trees with their bright orange incisors.
Other animals are less obvious to spot, Marshall said. The color of a "walking stick" bug changes with the season -- green in the spring, brown in the fall -- to blend in with surrounding plant life.
Then, there's the hummingbird clearwing moth. Near the Nature Center, an observer can spot a yellow and burgundy moth the size of a hummingbird flapping its fuzzy, translucent wings.
Its body, which resembles a lobster tail, will show up in a Google Images search for "strange bird bug."
Another moth to look for is a Polyphemus moth, Marshall said.
With large, purple eye-spots, the insect was named for the man-munching giant from Homer's Odyssey. The blind brute has a single eye in the middle of his forehead.
After running through a list of animals, Marshall told the group how to seek them out. They can go outside with guidebooks, and they also can take other free Nature Center classes, like one taught on types of animal scat.
In the front row, Chloe sat next to her dad, Brett Carlock, and whispered to her friend, Savannah, the unsavory definition of the word "scat," which is animal droppings.
Of all the animals to find downtown, Chloe, 9, liked the beetle the best. Marshall has passed around a jar with the iridescent bug inside.
Chloe said she liked to examine the beetle's "feature-osities," a word that, presumably, means both features and curiosities.
Savannah, age 8, said she liked "that flying bee thingy-ma-bobby" because "it looked funny and was kind of cute."
But she was not impressed with the black rat snake. Stretching up to 3½ feet long, the reptile can squeeze through any space small enough for a rat or a mouse.
Savannah did not disguise her true feelings.
"Kind of disgusting," she said.
Metro on 01/28/2018