Opossums and Pack Rats and Giant Black Millipedes, Oh My!

The families wandered into the park in old shirts, comfy jeans and worn sneakers.

The kids were kids: darting around trees and over logs. The parents were parents: cautioning not to get too close to the creek, you’ll fall in.

At 7 p.m., the soft orange tint to the light filtering through the trees signaled that sunset was near. Rumps settled onto brown wooden benches.

When the guides ambled onstage, the crowd knew that Nature Nights, a hiking and education series at Oak Canyon Nature Center in Anaheim Hills, had begun.

As naturalist Kevin Somes explained, the crowd of 80 would learn a little about some of the park’s indigenous animals, then go on a twilight walk. That night, the opossum opened the show.

Marci, a 2-year-old marsupial, has 50 sharp teeth -- more than any other mammal, explained handler and naturalist Candi Hubert.

“Do they lose their teeth and grow them back?” shouted a boy.

“I don’t think so,” Hubert replied.

Other facts pop out: Opossums don’t hang by their tails. They’ve been around about 60 million years.

“If you guys show me two fingers,” Hubert said to the crowd, holding up a pair of touching digits, “I’ll let you pet her like this”: Hubert’s fingers slid down Marci’s coarse coat. Marci made the rounds for a series of quick pets.

A Western toad was next. Only one finger from each kid was used to touch its bumpy, fragile skin.

The giant black millipede from Madagascar finished up the show and tell. Its park-inhabiting cousins are only 2 to 3 inches long, Somes said -- much smaller than the handful of wiggling black he handled.

“When you step on an insect you are crushing its exoskeleton,” Somes told the crowd. “Think like an M&M.;”

“Eew!” rippled through the audience but turned to chuckles when Somes started the joke contest -- parents versus kids. He warned that in more than 35 years of Nature Nights, the kids have always won.

“What’s as big as an elephant but weighs nothing at all?”

The kids shouted “Shadow!” without raising their hands. A woman raised her hand and “borrowed” the answer. Score one for the adults.

It was the beginning of the upset.

Craig Williams’ “Receding hare line” answer to “What do you call 10 rabbits standing in a line who take a step backward?” put things over the edge.

Final score: adults, 7; kids, 6.

But the disappointment gave way to excitement as the more than 80 would-be hikers divided into three groups based on difficulty of the trail they would wander.

Hubert started her group -- about half were parents and kids with Cub Scout Pack 96/207 -- on the Stream Trail.

“Whoa. Sweet. It’s a den,” a trio of boys exclaimed as the group passed a fallen log.

“No, it’s a hole where a tree fell over,” responded Sandy Gray of Fullerton, who was hiking with her 9-year-old son, Ian.

None of the boys heard -- they were off poking into shadowy places with flashlights, exploring sticky spider webs and pack-rat nests Hubert pointed out.

It was “whoa!” this and “sweet!” that as Hubert went on to reveal other aspects of the park: the 300-year-old oak tree, the spit-wad-like hummingbird nest built from sycamore fuzz and spider webs, the Cooper’s hawk nest.

The group meandered its way along a narrow footpath on Wren Way, squeezing to one side during a traffic jam with another group hiking in the opposite direction.

Cacti bordered the trail at random points, and one adult joked to wandering kids: “This’ll keep you on the trail.”

Hubert led her group through patches of licorice-scented anise and piquant sage with the words “Smell it, don’t pick it.”

No one was about to pick any of the next plant. “If you rub your fingers on it, it smells like a thousand dirty socks,” Hubert said of the stinky green foliage.

“Smells like under your bed, Nick,” said Heidi Irby of Fullerton to her son.

“Mom!” he yelled back.

As the walk wound to a close and the group once again approached the creek and nature center, kids chattered about the things they’d seen -- including pack rats, hawks and hidden spider webs.

Hubert said her goodbyes and answered lingering questions about the park. Some kids, with visions of coyotes and raccoons, begged parents to bring them back for Wednesday’s Flashlight Hike.