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REIDSVILLE - Elan Ashley and Kameron Burgess can name dozens of animals you might find in your backyard or the woods and creeks beyond. They’ve been bitten, stung or attacked by most. And they couldn’t be happier.

The two rising juniors at Rockingham County High School have a love for the outdoors and the animal kingdom that might rival Marlin Perkins or Steve Irwin. They spend hours wandering the woods and wetlands around Rockingham County looking for any kind of critter they can find — opossums, spiders, snakes. They love to see the animals up close.

“We were the two weird kids,” Elan said. “I would always complain about littering and stuff.”

“And I would talk about the snakes I found,” Kameron said.

The boys met in middle school but didn’t discover their shared love of nature until last year. Since then, they’ve spent hours together hiking through the woods and slogging through creeks looking for cool stuff. You know, stuff like copperheads.

“That was crazy,” Kameron said about finding the snake. “My heart rate was pretty much nonexistent.”

The boys look like typical teens. Elan is thin and tall; Kameron a bit shorter and only recently trimmed his shaggy haircut. But get them talking about their most recent discoveries and they show a depth of knowledge and passion for learning that you’d expect to find in seasoned professionals, not guys who still need a ride to get to most places.

Where most see icky and scary, they see beauty and wonderment. So in another show of maturity beyond their years, the boys offered a class last week to educate children about the things living in their backyards.

The boys hooked up with Cyd Overby, an administrative assistant for the local soil and water conservation office and held the class at Courtland Park in Reidsville . The class was made up of about a dozen kids from a local day care.

Kameron brought the black widow spider he found and his pet ball python . After a bit of show and tell, the kids couldn’t take their eyes off these two mad adventurers. But there was still some hesitation from the kids when the boys led the group down to a creek running through the park. The children watched intently but didn’t venture down the five-foot grassy bank into the creek as Elan and Kameron maneuvered nets of various sizes through the creek.

To the untrained or unobservant, the creek looked lifeless. But the boys knew better, and it took only a few minutes to bring small fish, crayfish and frogs to the surface.

There discoveries were met with “ewwws” and “awwws,” and before long, the once-hesitant children were hip deep in the creek, sifting the water with nets, hoping to make their own big find.

“This is more fun than Xbox,” said 9-year-old Gage McCollum as he wadded through the creek with one of the biggest nets. He even managed to catch a fish.

And all the while, Elan and Kameron were right there alongside, their own childlike wonder and excitement equal to that of their new students.

“This was really cool,” Kameron said, at one point looking upstream at all the kids searching for something they’d never seen before. “I’d love to do this again,” Elan said.

Teaching in some form may be in both their futures. Kameron is well on his way to a career as a herpetologist, a reptile scientist.

Elan’s more of an environmentalist. He wants to travel the world, dropping into those last few places unspoiled by human contact and work to keep them that way.

Both say they hope to work together in the years to come.

Contact J. Brian Ewing at 627-4881, Ext. 120, or brian.ewing@news-record.com