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Alaina Owen had a surprise for the dozen campers sitting in a Rookery Bay classroom Tuesday morning. There was a half an hour before lunch, and the Marco Island children had a visitor.

As Melissa Horadam, a Rookery Bay volunteer, opened the doors children gasped as they looked at the red snake wrapping itself around her arm.

“It’s Snakester,” said Owen, an education specialist at Rookery Bay.

Snakester is a red rat snake and his visit was one of several educational opportunities Island children participating in the Junior Naturalist Camp at Rookery Bay were able to experience this week.

According to the camp description, the one-week camp will give children a chance to identify new species of fish, snakes and birds, while honing their observation skills and search for signs of life at Rookery Bay Reserve. Students spend three of the five days at Rookery Bay, the rest of the time is spent on field trips.

Students will be traveling to Tigertail Beach today, Owen said. A trip to Eagle Creek in Naples is scheduled for Friday.

This is the first time the park has paired up with Rookery Bay to host a summer camp. The camp gives children a chance to better understand the environment in which they live, Owen said.

“We’re hoping they learn more about the animals in their backyard,” she said. “Some of these kids do know a lot already. For a lot of these kids, it seems like fishing is something they do everyday in the summer.”

On Tuesday, before Snakester made his appearance, students were asked to go on a scavenger hunt. They needed to identify animals and their defense systems, the topic of the day.

“In some ways, they are really savvy,” she said. “But they are learning a lot too.”

Danielle Scola, 10, said she was surprised with how much she had learned by her second day at camp. That white bird that hung out in her backyard, for example, was called a white ibis.

“I never knew what it was called,” she said of the picture hanging around her neck. “I always saw it, and now I’m learning about it.”

Learning about a specific animal will come in handy on Friday when students do a performance for their parents highlighting what they learned, Owen said.

While at Eagles Lake, Owen said children will participate in the ‘Council of All Beings,’ where each child represents all a specific species they studied throughout the week.

There will be one more session of the Junior Naturalist Camp, beginning July 9. The camp, which costs $85 for residents, is being run through the Mackle Park’s summer camp program.

For information, or to sign up for the camp, call 642-0575.