Wild cards

Which animal has the most teeth? Which mammal bears the most young? Where’s the world’s fastest-moving glacier? When you’re cooped up in a tent waiting out a rainy spell, a stack of nature flashcards might be the perfect boredom breaker. According to Extreme Nature Knowledge Cards from the Sierra Club, the spinner dolphin has 225 teeth, the common tenrec gives birth to litters of 10 to 20 young, and Columbia Glacier in Alaska moves at a rate of 15 feet to 100 feet per day. Wilderness Survival Skills flashcards, also from the Sierra Club, offer lifesaving tips on how to make a walking splint or what to do if a bear charges you. But if you just want to play a hand of Go Fish around the campfire, you might as well pack the Ocean Life deck from Heritage Playing Card Co. in which each card is a different species (the hairy ghost pipefish on the four of diamonds is pretty distracting). Other themes include exotic animals -- a komodo dragon, gecko and giant panda, for instance -- and flowers from Shakespeare’s writings. You can even get cards with fungi and mushrooms for stalking salad fodder in the woods. If you have your own perfect snapshots of nature, you can design your own deck through www.newtsplayingcards.com.