Community Corner

Montville Hopped to the Sock Challenge

Girl Scout Troop 63033 collected 63.5 pounds of used socks!

The sock-collection project started by Girl Scout Troop 63033 was a resounding success, says leader Mary Fitzgerald.

The troop, 12 girls grades 6 through 8, from Uncasville and Oakdale, helped a University of California researcher with a project to help a rare California weasel, the Pacific fisher.

Montvillians donated old but not holey socks, dropping them in collection boxes in the Leonard J. Tyl Middle School, the lobby of the Fair Oaks building, Montville Town Hall, the Montville Youth Center, Montville Senior Center and the Raymond Library.

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During the project, the troop collected  63.5 pounds of socks, which it sent to scientist Rick Sweitzer, who filled them with chicken to use as bait for the fishers. The animals are elusive, but their interest in the meat-filled socks is enough to make them visible enough that biologists can record them and their travels.

Sweitzer put out the word in December and, according to a story in the Sacramento Bee, “the request went viral.”

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(In that story, the Montville troop is mentioned specifically! Click here to read it.)

Fitzgerald says the sock project was a good one for the troop to take on because it helped someone, but “it didn’t cost anybody anything.” The girls weren’t asking for money, or selling anything – just collecting stuff that most folks probably would have thrown out anyways.

One footnote here, so to speak. The box in the entranceway to Montville Town Hall wasn’t picked up at the project’s end, and people have continued to put their used socks in it. Fitzerald says the troop will figure out something to do with those socks!

Do you have ideas about what the troop should do with these extra socks? Add them in the comment box below!

 

 

 


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