Kerry Wixted’s career has taken her to far-flung fields and forests, from the early days when she studied native ginseng populations across eight states to last year when she traveled to Japan to train teachers in nature education. Closer to home, she’s best known for enlightening countless children and adults about the plants and animals in their own backyards and communities. I am one of those people, becoming a fan of Kerry years ago when a colleague handed me back issues of Habichat, the newsletter she creates in her role as an education and outreach specialist for the Maryland Department of Natural Resources’ Wildlife and Heritage Service.

Kerry wears her affection for misunderstood creatures on her sleeve, frequently donning dresses with beetle designs and spider costumes. But everyone has their fears, and she freely confesses to her aversion to roaches. “Even the native wood roaches are not my favorites due to growing up in city apartment complexes as a child,” she wrote in response to an online discussion about dismantling nature-based phobias. “It takes a lot on my part not to shout and bolt when I flip over a log and see a wood roach while leading people outside.” In this interview, originally conducted for a column on respecting natural wildlife behaviors, Kerry explains how she works through her own fears and helps others overcome theirs, too.

Q: You’ve mentioned that you have trouble with roaches. How are they different for you from other animals? You pretty much like everybody.

I’ve never really been a big fan, but I’ve been working on that. If you can believe it, at one time I wasn’t a big spider fan or snake fan either. And wasps too. But along the way I’ve just learned about how beneficial these organisms are and how they help me in my day-to-day life. And when I started getting outside more, it was like, well, snakes are always running away from me.

Q: Are there things to keep in mind that are different when working with adult fears versus trying to address kids’ fears?

Even with adults, I let them know that it’s ok to be afraid. It’s ok to be afraid of spiders, but it’s not ok to kill the spider because you’re afraid of it. I try to get that across so people don’t feel like it’s a bad thing to have fears; some of it is natural for a reason. So with kids it depends on the age group. I find a lot of younger kids are still forming their impressions so they’re really easy to work with. If you just make it seem cool in some way, shape or form, they’re all over that. With groups of kids like middle schoolers, I kind of look at whoever might be the brave one in the group. And then you work with the domino effect with them.

Q: One of your strengths is that you acknowledge where people are coming from in their fears instead of quickly imposing your own views. Maybe that comes from having gone through that evolution yourself?

I bring in my firsthand experiences. I talk about snakes and say, “I’ve handled snakes a lot for my job, but how many times do you think I‘ve been bitten?” Same thing with spiders. I was talking about spiders yesterday for a class and I said, “I’ve handled a lot of spiders personally and professionally, and I’ve only been bitten one time.”

Q: So people automatically think spiders bite?

Yeah, a lot of it is a fear of what they can do to you. People think these animals are going after us and attacking us. But really we share a lot of similar qualities, right? They want to defend their young, so they get a little more defensive if there’s young in the picture. And that’s the same if there’s a yellow jacket defending its nest.

I’ve been stung by yellow jackets quite a bit, but we let a yellow jacket nest go on our property two years ago. I had read so much about how they’re important predators and everything, and I thought, well, let’s just give it a chance. I found this method of using an inverted glass bowl [to eliminate the nest if necessary]. So we had that all in place. I talked to my husband, we roped off the area, and I told our neighbors, “Hey, just stay away from the spot.”

I’d go out there and watch them every day. And it was really fun watching them pull insects off of my garden plants and drag them down into the nest. And early in the season I could actually get really close to the nest and watch them, and they didn’t mind me being there. Probably it was because I wasn’t doing things like stomping on the ground and making those vibrations that would disturb their habitat, and I wasn’t making fast motions towards them.

Last year the new queen set up shop in a very similar spot. And that colony got really, really big, and I started getting a little nervous about the size. The next door neighbors’ boys had been running through the yard, and I just didn’t want them getting stung.

That weekend, a raccoon dug it all up and ate everybody. So they took care of it for me. This is how nature works, you know? Some of these organisms that you might be a little concerned about—if you let the other organisms do their job, it’s all that circle of life.

Q: That’s great! How would you recommend people begin to observe these interactions in nature?

I like to do what’s called “Sit Spot,” where you walk to a place and sit down for five to ten minutes, close your eyes and just pay attention to everything that’s in that little area surrounding you for those couple minutes. And that really helps get me in tune to what’s happening around me. You start hearing things that you normally would tune out, you start seeing things that you normally wouldn’t see. It just fine tunes your senses. You’ll hear rustling in the leaves and you see the ants working steadily to drag stuff back home.

If you sit still for a while and pay attention, a whole world opens up in front of you. (Video: Nancy Lawson)

One time I found a green snake that I would have totally missed. But I was sitting there, and he started hunting. He started taking his head and slamming the leaves, and apparently they do that so the crickets under the leaves jump out so they can eat them. And I would have totally missed that if I hadn’t stopped and just stood there quietly for a little bit—because he was pretty quiet, but when you’re not doing anything, it sounds really loud.

Q: When you teach, you’re good at keeping your own fears at bay.

I try to model good behavior when I take people around outside. Because I know that if I scream or react to something in a negative manner, that’s going to influence the people around me. Sometimes we can accidentally place our fears on the students that we work with. So if you’re a teacher and you scream and stomp on a spider, then all those kids around you who look up to you are going to internalize that and think that’s what they should do too.

Q: What are the consequences of misinformation?

It’s really, really important to present good information. I see a lot of the misinformation being spread unfortunately even on social media. People don’t research the original source before they share it, and then something goes viral, and then it can be about some false aspect of an animal that really perpetuates those fears. So it’s difficult to get beyond that, but I think finding something that really resonates with your audience is the most important part.

Q: Childhood impressions are especially important. They’re the reason you still have trouble with roaches.

I’m getting a little better. Every year there’s a certain time at the end of June when the wood roaches all start congregating. And if my husband leaves the porch light on for me, they will all congregate on the door. And the first time that happened I started screaming, “Open a window, I can’t use the door!” I was not going through that front door with all the wood roaches on it. So last year when I saw the door with all the wood roaches on it, I just took a couple deep breaths and slowly opened it so they didn’t get startled and start flying around. And then I quickly slammed it as soon as I got past the danger point. Step by step, I’m trying.

People have fears for different reasons. Sometimes people can point to an exact [origin of their] fear, and my example is the time I got pulled off of a swing by a Doberman pinscher. I was a kid, I got attacked out of nowhere, it was a traumatizing experience. And even today when I see Dobermans, I feel my body tensing, even though I know consciously as an adult that that was an isolated incident. I still can pinpoint that experience for my fear of that animal. But there’s a lot too that forms when we’re younger that people can’t pinpoint. And I think those are sometimes the harder things to deal with because you don’t know what caused those original fears.

Q: What are some things that you typically tell people about spiders to get them interested?

A lot of people don’t realize the relationship between spiders and hummingbirds—that hummingbirds actually eat insects and spiders and they also use the webbing for their nests. So when you connect those organisms to something they really like, that makes them think a little bit more about that.

A lot of times when I’m working with women’s groups, it’s fun to talk about spider mating rituals—essentially all the hoops that the males have to jump through. Some spider males have to bring gifts. Some of them sing and dance. Some of them have to build elaborate displays. And if she doesn’t like it, he usually becomes a meal in the process.

Q: How do you talk to people about misunderstood mammals?

Just like with the spiders, I try to bust the myths that might be causing some of their fears. A lot of times people are afraid of foxes during the day because they automatically think that they’re rabid. And I’m like, “Have you ever tried to raise five kids at once? That’s a lot of mouths to feed. They’re out there, they have to hunt day in, day out, 20 hours a day, so that’s why you’re seeing them during the day in the springtime.”

Q: Do you remember a time when you were really excited that you’d made a breakthrough?

I taught for “Becoming an Outdoorswoman,” and one of the classes was gardening for pollinators, and there were two women from Baltimore. And one of them said, “I just want to learn how not to have insects in my yard, so I want to learn how not to attract them. And I’m only here because my friend wanted me to come to this one.” We talked about pollinators and made mason bee houses, and then right afterwards they left. I was cleaning up all of the drills, and they came running into the room about 15 minutes later. They were so excited because they saw some bees and butterflies down by the lake. The woman who was jumpy about insects said, “I was brave enough to get this close to take a picture.” There’s still a ways for her to go, but she changed essentially how she was looking at insects, not as pests but as beneficial critters that need help.

Q: Do you think there is hope for people gaining more awareness ?

I do. One of the things that I’ve really noticed is that there seems to be more of a shift to scientists becoming communicators, and I think that’s been one of our problems all along—people are doing research that’s not really digestible by the public. And unless you’re willing to read through a 20-page technical paper that often you have to pay for, you really have to be dedicated to find that information. So I think one of the great things about Facebook that people don’t realize is that some of these scientists are making themselves a lot more accessible. There’s David Steen if you’re into snakes, there’s Art Evans who deals with beetles. There’s Mike Raupp’s Bug of the Week. There’s Eric Eaton on Bug Eric—he’ll go through research articles and then translate them essentially for the public. That’s something we need more of.

Related content: See “What Are We So Afraid Of?” for advice on learning to respect and appreciate natural wildlife behaviors.

Featured image of jumping spider: Nancy Lawson