Children from the Boys & Girls Club got a real outdoor education Friday evening as they hunted for turtles along the wooded trails of the Great Neck Wildlife Sanctuary.

Marion's local turtle man, Don Lewis, and turtle lady, Sue Wieber Nourse, taught the 30 or so children in attendance about two kinds of turtles, as well as turtle egg-laying behavior.

Lewis and Wieber Nourse let the children touch and hold two kinds of turtles, the painted box turtle and the terrapin, and showed them a clutch of eggs the female terrapin had laid.

“Why do you think the eggs are so squishy?” Lewis asked the children. “Well, if the mother drops the eggs -- what would happen if they aren’t squishy? They would break.”

Lewis and Wieber Nourse also led the children on a walk through the woods to look for turtles. Though they did not see any, Lewis did show them an increasingly-rare variety of flower, called a lady slipper orchid.

Lewis said he thought the experience was a very good one overall for the children.

“This is an opportunity they don’t get much chance to experience,” Lewis said. “You don’t want to restrain them. You don’t want to be constantly holding them back, because you want them to come back, and you want them to enjoy nature.”