Earth Gets Its Day in the Sun

At the Santa Ana Zoo on Saturday, Bradley Cooke was something of a pint-size sage. Despite his stubborn shocks of sandy hair, despite his left foot that suddenly got stuck in a wooden fence, this 7 1/2-year-old offered his own brand of wisdom on the meaning of Earth Day.

“It’s about cleaning up trash on the beach and stuff,” Bradley said. “And if you don’t clean up all the trash, the ocean will just go dry, and the sky will just be clouds and smoke, lots of smoke. And then people can’t breathe, and the animals might die.”

Who tosses trash from car windows or dumps pollution in waterways?

“They’re bad people who don’t want to take care of the Earth,” said Bradley, of Yorba Linda, during his high-energy tour of the zoo with his Aunt Nancy, his grandmother and 5-year-old sister Madeline.

Madeline wasn’t convinced by Bradley’s apocalyptic version. Standing there with one shoe untied, she cradled a makeshift flowerpot made with folded newspaper. Inside were seeds. Special seeds.

“It’s going to turn into a sunflower,” Madeline said, beaming. “I’m going to put lots of water in it and watch it grow.”

These were dual messages for Earth Day during one of several celebrations in Orange County to mark the event.

The zoo’s education curator, Kent Yamaguchi, set up several displays that stressed recycling, conservation and the use of certain snails, ladybugs or wasps--instead of pesticides--to devour whiteflies. There was information about the use of energy-saving, fluorescent bulbs. And upbeat messages.

“Not so much gloom and doom,” Yamaguchi said. “Instead, we wanted to provide positive things that you and I could do to make a small difference. But a small difference can go a long way.”

Yamaguchi brought a tub filled with rich wet soil and wiggly red worms. He keeps the worms at home, feeding them minced vegetables.

“I feed them vegetable tops, and all of my table scraps,” Yamaguchi said. “They serve a purpose, turning the food into fertilizer. And when I don’t have table scraps, I feed them newspaper.”

Nearby, Tom Dix, the city of Santa Ana’s water inspector, handled out bottled water to sometimes skeptical customers. One woman wrinkled her face when she read the label, which said, “Santa Ana Water.”

“Best stuff around,” Dix told her. “That’s what most of your bottled water is--tap water. Except they charge you a lot more than the city does.”

Dix’s message focused on water conservation and water quality. Santa Ana gets its water from several deep wells around the city, as well as from the Colorado River and the Metropolitan Water District. Said Dix: “As we get into summer, it’s all of our own water.”

Tony Amaya, 11, of Costa Mesa, said his family always recycles aluminum cans. Tony said he prefers grass and trees to concrete.

“Concrete is not living, and it takes up a lot of space that a tree could,” he said. “More people should plant trees so we could make the world green. The Earth is one of the only places that has oxygen, and we need oxygen to inhale and exhale.”

Bradley Cooke agreed: “We have to protect the Earth so it will survive.”

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30TH ANNIVERSARY

Al Gore helped kick off a daylong celebration in Washington, D.C. A25