A new reptile education and experience centre has opened its doors to families across Nottinghamshire, with the aim of teaching children about the exotic animals. Cyril's Nut Hut - a popular adventure play centre based in Long Eaton - has launched a new venture, known as Cyril’s Gone Wild, which allows children to get up close with a number of reptiles, including Australian water dragons and snakes.
Kids will be able to meet 11 species of animals. There are snakes, lizards, tarantulas, scorpions and hermit crabs at the centre, which opened its new encounter experience on Sunday, June 11. Cyril's Nut Hut has been family owned by Michelle Palmer, her husband Warren Palmer and their daughter Emily Smith. for the last two years.
The family has now decided it wants to share its love of animals with those who come and play at the centre. Emily Smith, 29, who works as the manager at Cyril's Nut Hut and will be heading up the Cyril's Gone Wild experience, said: "I've always had reptiles myself and I have a two-year-old daughter that loves them as well.
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"We've always looked at going places to see them but there's never anywhere around that we can go. So it was just an idea to teach younger and older children, too. Because not many people know about reptiles. Kids can get hands-on, and learn about them, and also we can teach them not to be scared of them.
"Because I'm a great animal lover I just thought it would be nice to show other people." Emily will also be running a course, between four and five weeks in length, where children can come to the centre and learn about each species and take part in activities with the animals.
The reptile experience can be booked for a number of occasions including parties, and there are various packages available for children of different ages, or children looking for different types of experiences.
A reptile encounter lasting for 40 minutes will cost £50 for up to three people. It will then be an additional £15 per person. This involves learning how to handle your own choice of animals, learning about how these animals live in the wild, and also how to care for them and prepare their food.
Emily has undertaken a number of training courses to be able to teach children how to handle animals and has just started another course with a reptile specialist. Speaking on how the idea came about, Michelle said: "We had a Disney princess room and it wasn't really getting that many views, so my daughter, who's the manager, thought maybe we could have an animal room.
"So she made a proposal and pitched it to my husband and he told her to go for it. It was meant to be this little thing but now it's spiralled into this huge state-of-the-art encounter with every species of reptile you can think of.
"We contacted a local reptile breeder and they came up with the designs for the tanks. A huge amount has gone into this, we've been able to give the animals double the comfortable space and every habitat is created to suit that animal's needs."
Bookings for the experience open on June 11, and enquiries can be made through Cyril’s Nut Hut Facebook page.
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