Name: Chet Ryndak, 47
Occupation: Naturalist and director of River Trail Nature Center, part of the Forest Preserve District of Cook County
Background: Ryndak has a bachelor`s degree in geology from Northern Illinois University and a master`s degree in environmental studies from Northeastern Illinois University. He is a part-time professor of soil science at Harper College and has taught several courses in exhibit design for naturalists at Northeastern. Ryndak, who is married and the father of two daughters, is a lifelong resident of the Chicago area.
Years in present position: 23
We have everything here from plants and honeybees to mammals, amphibians, reptiles and birds. The animals that are kept permanently on display are animals that would never make it out in the wild; they look to people for their food every day. Others have some type of injury that prevents their release.
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Some visitors come here and say that the animals shouldn`t be kept on display, but if they`re put loose, they`re going to die. It`s one choice or the other.
I can`t actually say that I have anything like a typical day here. The first thing we always do in the morning is check out the center. We make sure the animals are all okay. We have a maintenance staff that looks after the animals, but one of the naturalists always checks on them, too.
We also do a car count every day to see what kind of attendance we receive. This past year has been a little lower than the year before. We ran about 430,000. This was probably because of the inclement weather-extreme heat and then very wet in the summer.
The rest of the day just depends on what happens. I usually spend a good portion of the day on the phone with people who have questions about wildlife. People also pop in with questions about our trail system, where they can hike, what they can do for recreation or where they might find a particular bird in the area. I`d say I spend about 20 to 30 percent of my day on phone calls or meeting people at the nature center itself.
A good portion of my day is also spent doing artwork for the nature center, working on an exhibit or a display. I also write articles for our nature bulletin, and since I`ve been director, there`s been plenty of other paperwork-reports, time records, setting up projects. There`s a lot of administrative material that keeps me strapped to the desk. I`d prefer to be out in the field more; that`s why I became a naturalist. But the more you move up the ladder, the more you stay at the desk.
I also have some special projects that I work on. For the last 15 years I`ve been involved with the bird-banding projects. We band birds for the federal government and keep an eye out for changes in population and nesting of birds in the area.
We work periodically with Eagle Scouts on their projects. Right now we`re working with a young man who is moving up from Boy Scout to Eagle Scout. He`s trying to develop bluebird boxes to attract bluebirds to the area. At one time bluebirds were abundant around here, but now they`re quite rare. We attracted 12 young bluebirds recently to a site near the nature center, and we`re very excited about this success.
My favorite part of this job is getting to be out-of-doors. If I can be outside for at least a half hour a day, I enjoy it. Even if I`m just standing next to a bird feeder, absorbing nature, I`m happy.
People call us with all kinds of questions, quite often about bird life. For injured birds we refer them to a rehabilitator in the area who would be able to treat the bird. Sometimes we also get involved in rehabilitating a bird or mammal that`s injured.
My favorite question was from a woman in Palatine who called and told me she heard a loud rattling sound in her garden. She said: ”I looked down, and I saw two eyes looking up at me from the ground. I know it`s a large poisonous rattlesnake, and I`ve already called the police, and I`d like to know if you`d be interested in coming out to pick it up.”
I told her that, to my knowledge, there has never been a rattlesnake in Palatine or anywhere around this area. Well, she wouldn`t listen to any of that. She said: ”The police are here. I`ll call you right back.” Five minutes went by, and she called back and said, ”You`re not going to believe this, but it flew away.” It turns out it was a bat. She said it was hidden down in the grass and she couldn`t see the wings. It makes you wonder about an eyewitness in a courtroom who gets up and says, ”That`s the person,” when someone can`t even tell the difference between a bat and a snake.
Some other people called us once, a day after they had been to the nature center, and explained that their keys were taken from them by a crow. They had been feeding the crow bits of bread, and the crow grabbed the shiny keys. They asked if we`d look for the keys and said they thought the crow had flown to the center building. So one of the naturalists climbed up on the ladder and looked down into the gutter to see what was up here. The crow was standing up on the top of the roof; he was a very tame crow that we fed every day.
Well, the naturalist looked into the gutter, and there were six sets of keys, some coins, acorns, hickory nuts and little bits of trinkets and plastic. He had this whole stash of things up there. And the funny part is, nobody else had ever complained about losing their keys.
Once we tried to capture a snowy owl that we had spotted flying around the town of Arlington Heights. It`s a heavily populated area, and we were afraid the bird wouldn`t last long, that it would starve to death or get hit by a car or something. So a few friends and I decided to try to capture him. The bird has very little fear of people, and it has to eat. They eat mice or other birds. Several of us got down on the snowy ground with a pigeon on our chests and a gloved hand, waiting for the owl to jump on our chests to get the pigeon. The owl passed over I don`t know how many times in a couple hours. We were freezing on that snow.
It never did come down. We had people thinking we were crazy. Eventually we caught him in a little wire box-type trap with a little mouse in it. We took him up to Wisconsin into an open area up there and let him go.
If we have any real problems here, we call in the Forest Preserve Police. These are rare, but the more troublesome incidents around here generally have to do with people, not animals. Like the 75-year-old woman who insisted on feeding bread to a fox and finally hit me over the head with her loaf of bread and rode off on her bicycle because I kept telling her to stop. Or the occasional poachers or people who pick rare wildflowers or drive motorized vehicles onto the trails.
The most dangerous episode I`ve ever gotten into with people was one time when I came upon a group of about 40 motorcyclists after the park had closed. They all surrounded me and asked who I was. Being alone, I thought it was going to be a real problem getting them all out of there. I tried to be as cordial as possible, and I wound up talking them out of the area. But it rattled me to have 40 people standing there who knew they were doing something wrong and knew I had to tell them to leave.
But, on the whole, people come to the center to use it for educational purposes. In the last three or four years we haven`t had any malicious attempts that I`ve been aware of to harm the wildlife. There`s always the 2-or 3-year-old child who runs after a duck or goose, but the goose will sometimes turn the tables on him and take care of the problem by itself.
Some people come here just to park their car and read a book, sometimes on their lunch hour. They`re looking for some solitude. Or they might be interested in birdwatching. There are displays inside the center on what birds can be seen in any particular month.
Of course, we have lovebirds here, too. This is a fine place for people to come out and walk hand in hand on the trails. We`re especially fond of that variety of bird.