Nature’s Classroom is an outdoor sleep away learning classroom in Becket, Massachusetts. At Nature’s Classroom (NC) we get to do different activities, classes, and more. One of the activities that we did was called Predator vs Prey. In the game everyone was in different groups. The lowest groups were the main prey: centipedes and tics. The bugs couldn’t eat anything, but anything could eat them. The next group were the frogs. There were the Canadian frogs and the just plain frogs. They could eat bugs and the next group up could eat them. The next group up (and the final one) were the snakes. The snakes were the best group out of them all. They could eat anything, and nothing could eat them, so they were basically invincible.

 

I got put in one of the worst groups, the centipedes. But fortunately, I also got put in a group with some of my really good friends. I was with Olive, Olivia, and Eden F.  All together there were eleven centipedes. Throughout the game we had to hide, run and sneak around. But, the simulation was a “walking simulation”. A walking simulation was when you had to walk around everywhere until told to run. Basically, Carrot (group leader) always had to be in the front of all of us. If one of us passed him, he would say “freeze” and the person in front of him had to freeze for twenty seconds. While we were going we couldn’t do anything but walk and speed walk. No running, no jogging, no skipping, just walking. If a predator group was coming behind a prey group, the leader of the predator group blew his or her whistle for meal time. When a predator group leader blows a whistle, everyone starts running. The predator group will chase different people from the prey group and try to tag them. If you got tagged, you would leave your group and join theirs. The main point of the game was to try and survive in your original group for the whole game. This whole tagging thing went on until the group leader blew their whistle again, which meant the tagging time was over.

 

One by one the predator groups picked off members from out pathetic centipede group. At the ten minute mark, it was only me, Olivia, Eden, and Olive. We were all really happy and surprised that we made it this far. We were really proud of ourselves because we made it farther than some of the really “fast and strong” people in our group. But, we still had to remember that the game was still going and we needed to be careful because the predator groups were getting much bigger. We had two attacks before the game ended. Fortunately, we all survived. Though, I’m not a very strong runner and during one of the attacks I got a really bad running cramp. Luckily just as I got it the attack ended. Finally, we heard the ending whistle and we knew it was over. We had survived as little old centipedes.

 

Picture by PDS