Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, April 10, 1995 TAG: 9504120007
SECTION: NEWSFUN PAGE: NF-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MIMI EUBANK STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
But Tucker and Butler were surprised to find a heap of trash beneath the stage just before the puppet show began.
Tucker asked the audience to be on the lookout for anyone "suspicious or weird-looking" who may have put the trash there.
Joanie the puppet had the kids make a pledge: "I promise to keep my eyes and ears wide open" for any litterbugs. Each member of the audience was made Clean Valley detectives.
This was all part of a puppet show that Puppets by Pizzazz gives to help the Clean Valley Council teach elementary school pupils about the dangers of littering and the importance of recycling.
The Clean Valley Council is an organization that gives kids and adults tips on keeping the Roanoke Valley clean by re-using items rather than throwing them away, and recycling glass, aluminum, paper and plastic.
During the puppet show, a host of puppets appeared to talk with Tucker and the audience.
Miss Frisbee, a retirement-age teacher and puppet, assured Tucker that the pupils at Fallon Park were very careful about not littering. She even had two puppet pupils who were posting recycling signs all over the school.
Brownie the dog only seemed interested in eating a roll of sausages draped around Tucker's neck. And besides, he's a dog. He can't litter, can he?
Phillip the puppet, who was at school with a cold, was too sick to be littering.
Tucker and the Clean Valley detectives were stumped. They put their heads together and thought back to what some of the puppets were doing during the show.
The two girl puppets who were hanging recycling signs were doing a good deed, but didn't realize that the paper signs were blowing away and littering the ground.
Phillip the puppet may have been too sick to litter, but his tissues were in that heap of garbage. He, too, was not thinking about properly disposing his trash.
And Brownie, the dog puppet, while trying to scarf down a roll of sausage, knocked a trash can to the ground, spilling more garbage into the pile.
By the end of the show, it became clear to Tucker and the audience who the litterbug was.
"A litterbug is not someone who is weird or suspicious-looking," explained Tucker. They can be people who simply are not careful about throwing away their trash.
Several members of the audience volunteered to help Tucker clean up the pile of garbage, and the school then received its award.
Elizabeth Bernie, who is the educator for the Clean Valley Council, goes to four to five elementary, middle and sometimes high schools a week to talk with kids about keeping the Roanoke Valley clean. She has been especially pleased with how excited elementary school pupils are about recycling and not littering.
"Most of my elementary school students know more about recycling than high school students," said Bernie.
Gerald McDearmon, principal at Fallon Park, says he thinks that's because groups such as the Clean Valley Council have begun teaching kids at any early age about the three R's: reduce, re-use and recycle.
Pupils in the audience at Fallon Park said they learned something from the puppet show.
Lydia Thomason, a third-grader, had this advice about littering: "Don't do it. There's so much garbage already."
She brings a lot of her family's recyclables to school, where the pupils use money from materials recycled to buy flowers for the school's courtyard.
Michelle Clemmer and J.J. Johnson, also third-graders, learned more about the kinds of products they can recycle.
Even the youngest pupils learned something from the show. Kindergartner Leslie McCarty said after the show, "Never throw trash on the ground."
by CNB