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Oct 24, 2023

Spring Creek Nature Center adds possums, snakes and a new playground

This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate Six years after

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Six years after the Spring Creek Greenway Nature Center was gutted by flooding caused by Hurricane Harvey, the facility is teeming with more wildlife exhibits than ever before with new exhibits of reptiles, amphibians and new animal ambassador Penny the possum.

The nature center added a new room of animal enclosures, a new playground and a boardwalk leading to its pond after remodeling in November 2022.

Before Harvey, the center had 11 animal displays. After the latest remodel, the center now hosts more than 60 species, Briscoe said.

"Our animal ambassadors have grown exponentially since then," Briscoe said. "It's kind of crazy because I tell people that Harvey was a devastation, but it was also a blessing in disguise."

The center saw 6,000 students on field trips from Montgomery County schools this year, but summer is peak season. After opening the playground in February and adding a boardwalk path to the pond, which is popular for summer fishing camps, Briscoe said all of the center's facilities are being put to good use.

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"It increases exponentially over the summer. There's usually a good steady flow of people through the building," Briscoe said. "During the summer, we also try to do some kind of activity or presentation every day, if not every other day that we are open because we have more people that come in."

Their latest animal ambassador, Penny, is the wildlife center's first mammal. Penny is unable to go back into the wild so was gifted by Friends of Texas Wildlife.

"She's already spoiled," Briscoe said. "Everybody loves her."

The center has pre-existing exhibits of venomous and nonvenomous snakes, reptiles and amphibians with names ranging from Gandalf to Colonel Honey Dijon Mustard III. Next to the displays are two aviaries hosting screech owls and a backyard habitat of native species and two indoor ponds hosting native fish and two native turtle species — an alligator snapping turtle and a softshell turtle.

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Next to Penny is another popular animal ambassador, an Argentenian black and white tegu. The large species of lizard can often be seen basking on a platform, Scott Boslow said.

Boslow previously worked at the Houston Zoo. With two other employees who have zoo experience, Boslow also helped design each exhibit, finding props from the outdoors and finding new activities for the animals to interact with.

"We're constantly redesigning and making habitats and making them look as naturalistic as possible," Boslow said.

While there aren't as many animal species at the Nature Center as the zoo, Boslow said he enjoys interacting with people more often.

"What we get to do is a little bit more hands on, working with families and kids and doing trail stuff," Boslow said. "I get to do a lot more outside like fishing days...it's almost a different job every day."

The Nature Center regularly hosts birding hikes, animal lessons, story time and fishing camps, with the next fishing camp set for June 16. Admission to the exhibits are free, and open from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesdays through Saturdays.

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