Meet Your Neighbor: Kaily Vitullo enjoys sharing her love of nature

Nature is wild and one of Mansfield’s own wants to share it with you.

Meet your neighbor, Kaily Vitullo, a naturalist at Crawford County Park District for over a year now.

“I go to eight different schools right now around here,” Vitullo said. “I’ll go once a month for any grade from preschool up to eighth grade.”

Lowe-Volk Nature Center in Crestline is the "hub" of the park district. It houses many wildlife specimens and exhibits.

“They always want the animals,” Vitullo noted. "‘Did you bring the snake? Did you bring this?’ But we can’t do that every time. Last month, we did spiders and insects, so that was fun.”

She said those who love gazing up at the night sky are in for a treat this month.

“This month, I brought out the planetarium. It's a big inflatable planetarium that the class goes inside,” Vitullo said. “We project the stars, talk about space.”

Visit the center and feed the animals

But classes offered through Lowe-Volk aren’t just for school kids.

“I do the feeding day programs every month here,” she said. “People come in and they get to feed all the animals that we have and make little toys to help enrich them because they're living in captivity.”

Vitullo especially likes to work with really young children. The Little Explorers program is for babies and toddlers up to age 5. "They come every month and it’s after hours, so it’s not crazy with a lot going on," she said. "I bring out a lot of different sensory things. I love doing that.”

Kids age 5 to 12 can participate in nature camps during the summer.

“We have a nature camp every year in the summer,” said Vitullo. “They are all one week long. We have seven of them now. We have eight weeks of nature camp going on, so that will be fun.”

A curiosity for nature

Vitullo says she has always been interested in wildlife and nature and what’s going on outside in the world around us. She says she grew up watching "Zoboomafoo."

Early volunteerism pointed her to a future career in wildlife management at Lowe-Volk Nature Center.

“When I was a junior naturalist at the Ohio Bird Sanctuary in high school, we actually came here every year," Vitullo added.

She attended Hocking College in 2011 and then transferred to the University of Rio Grande where she earned a bachelor's degree in wildlife management.

The job at Lowe-Volk brought her back to the area.

“I grew up in Mansfield,” said Vitullo. “I saw the position come open last year and I was like, ‘Oh, I’m going to try that!’ I was substituting before I got this. My husband and I just recently moved back to Mansfield.”

Since taking the position, she has been developing relationships in the community and urges others to get involved with the park district.

'Become a Friend' of the park district

“I would definitely say, become a 'Friend,’” said Vitullo. “Become a 'Friend’ of the park district because, if you do, you get a newsletter that lets you know everything that‘s going on for the season.”

Winter weather is fast-approaching, but there are still many things to do.

“Definitely come out to our programs that are coming up,” said Vitullo. “We’re about to have two new parks, including a new wildlife area for actual public hunting."

When the weather warms up, she encourages people to take advantage of the multi-use trail at Unger Park.

"Right now it’s just a walking path," stated Vitullo. "We’re going to be paving it, so you can actually bike down it or take a scooter, so it’ll be easier to traverse.”

Correspondent Joe Di Lullo can be reached at muckrack.com/dilulloj or jp.dilullo0926@gmail.com.

This article originally appeared on Mansfield News Journal: A Crawford County Park District naturalist loves teaching others