Every day for 12 years, one volunteer has shared his unique knowledge with visitors of a St. Pete nature preserve.
Dave McGuire might not shake your hand when you meet him. He might not have had time to wash since he fed the snakes and raptors, or since he picked up a gopher tortoise to check its gender. He might be a little shy.
But that doesn’t stop him from climbing behind the wheel of a battery-operated tram to lead packs of visitors – many of them restless, distracted kids – on 90-minute tours of the Boyd Hill Nature Preserve.
McGuire, a slightly built 49-year-old with wiry red hair and no children of his own, volunteers at the city-owned preserve at the south end of Lake Maggiore in St. Petersburg, Fla., seven days a week. He is one of about 50 volunteers who keep the 245-acre preserve humming, and who have become essential as the park faces continued threats of budget cuts.
“We’re down to skeleton crews,” says park supervisor Anne Fidanzato.
At any given time, Fidanzato leans on between 30 to 50 volunteers to supplement her paid staff of 17. The volunteers lead tours to introduce the park’s wildlife, direct classes and set up community outreach events. They also pitch in to help feed and tend the preserve’s enclosed and injured animals.
Chief among those volunteers is McGuire, one of the park’s longest-standing and most reliable volunteers. He’s been putting in between 60 and 70 hours a month at the park, month in and month out, for more than 12 years.
The Indiana native, who moved to Florida with his family when he was 12, won the preserve’s Green Thumb award last year in recognition of his hours of community service. Fidanzato doubts that McGuire hung the plaque anywhere public, though. “He’s modest about it,” she says. “He just wants to be here.”
McGuire first came to Boyd Hill to volunteer in 1996, with his sister, Pam Smolik. They both lived just a few blocks from the preserve, but had only visited once or twice before deciding to volunteer.
“I was hooked from day one,” he says.
Smolik met her husband at the preserve. She continues to work with the park's birds of prey. Smolik and McGuire took five weeks of intensive training before they were cleared to lead tours. McGuire grew up hanging around his father’s auto body repair shop, and studied business management in college. He says he learned most of what he knows about nature through observation and by reading field guides.
“I like to hang around here,” says McGuire, who doesn’t own a cell phone or a home computer. “I used to drive the rangers crazy asking so many questions.”
On weekends, McGuire escorts groups through the park in a Boyd Hill T-shirt with “Kid tested...Mother Nature approved” printed across the back. He totes as many as seven visitors through the preserve on the tram, stopping every five minutes or so to point out an osprey’s nest, some Spanish moss or a tortoise’s burrow.
The preserve, first opened to the public in 1943, hosts seven different ecosystems and a variety of protected plants and animals.
One recent afternoon, McGuire and the mothers and children on the tram count seven tortoises, 10 species of butterflies and a female alligator.
He has worked at his paying job – as a fabrication supervisor at a small commercial printer — for 21 years. After work and all day Saturday and Sunday he can be found at Boyd Hill. “I’m not a couch potato," he says. "I have to stay busy. And, ‘course, we all like animals. Most everyone likes animals.”
Fidanzato says volunteers are becoming more important as the city budget cuts have reduced maintenance jobs in recent years. She worries about more cuts in August, when the park’s budget is up for review. While she estimates it will cost $1 million to run the park this year, the preserve’s visitors only brought in about $200,000 in revenue in 2007.
After McGuire’s tour ends on this particular Saturday, he announces to his visitors that it’s feeding time. Moms, dads and grandparents take a quick step back when he reaches into the red rat snake’s cage. But the kids lean in a little closer. The snake winds itself up in McGuire’s arms and docilely slides into its feeding tub while McGuire explains that it has been in captivity since it was no bigger than a pencil.
A few minutes later, at the box turtle enclosure, a little girl asks her mother if she can pet one. McGuire holds it out for her, but not before asking, “What are we all going to do after we pet him?
“That’s right, we’re going to wash our hands!”