Collie Ennis: Why a podcast on all things creepy crawly appeals to 'that child in all of us'
Collie Ennis, left, co-hosts The Critter Shed Podcast with radio producer Colette Kinsella, right.
When Collie Ennis was growing up, he dreamed that one day he’d own a pet shop. It even had a name. He’d call it Snappy Happy Pets.
Now in his early forties, he may not have a pet shop, but a lot of the things he wanted out of Snappy Happy Pets have come to pass: he gets to handle, keep and observe all sorts of weird and wonderful creatures and he gets to tell other people about how cool they are, too.
He even has a menagerie of unusual creatures at his own home, including a tarantula and a boa constrictor. He has also been converting the land around his new home – Ennis moved to Wicklow in 2020 with his partner and two children after 16 years in a council house in Tallaght – into a habitat for the creatures he loves most, amphibians like frogs and newts.
“I’ve put in 12 ponds of varying sizes so it would be very amphibian friendly,” Ennis says. “I basically turned it into a swamp. There are frogs and newts everywhere, so I’m in my element. It’s the dream. I’m very, very grateful every day.”
While many working in the field of zoology study cute, furred mammals with endearing traits, Ennis has devoted his life’s work to less-well-loved members of the animal kingdom: reptiles, amphibians and invertebrates.
Dubliner Ennis, co-founder of the Herpetological Society of Ireland, Zoology research associate at Trinity College and co-host of The Critter Shed Podcast, often jokes about his Peter Pan complex, about the fact that he just carried a love of all things creepy crawly over from a childhood of fishing for tadpoles and collecting snails in buckets.
But there’s a serious element to this observation too.
US writer, philosopher and herbalist Stephen Harrod Buhner had a theory that the only thing you had to do to save the planet was to ensure that biophilia – the love of all living things – was fostered and encouraged in all children, and that the only thing you had to do to encourage biophilia was to let children get on with exploring nature, with as little adult interference as possible.
A generation of people with a deep-rooted love and respect for all life forms would not make decisions to harm the environment, Buhner reasoned: bankers, politicians and CEOs of companies would make decisions based on love of the natural world.
Ennis is very much in agreement when it comes to the potentially profound impacts of fostering children’s natural curiosity and love of all that wriggles, hops and crawls.
“When you talk to the zoologists in Trinity, it’s all the same story: it’s parents that encouraged them, let them climb trees and catch beetles and bring in the tadpoles,” he says. “That develops into a lifelong passion. If you have a healthy interest as a kid, of course it affects your thinking and your outlook on the world.”
The fact that that biophilia is lying dormant in most adults is evident, Ennis says, in the responses to his science communication work: he generates big responses on his social media channels and with The Critter Shed podcast, which he co-hosts with radio producer Colette Kinsella.
“When I put up a video of a centipede or a dragonfly larva or something, loads of people seem to get a kick out of it,” he says. “I think it’s that child in all of us. It really blows me away.”
He also believes that positive messages are a great antidote to the aura of climate anxiety-related nihilism that is becoming pervasive in society.
“My granny used to say, ‘you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar,’” he says. “I think it’s wrong to always be giving out and preaching to people about the environment. I think it’s much better to show them what they can do, what an amazing difference they can make.
“So I think putting up little videos, doing a podcast about stuff you can do is a very effective method of conservation work. But you have to help people get over the idea that there’s nothing they can do.”
The Critter Shed, which has run to 57 episodes so far and has the second part of season six due out soon, is both the perfect vehicle for Ennis’ approach but also proof that it works: he finds himself inundated with pictures of ponds people have dug, requests for advice on rewilding.
At Cork Podcast Festival, Ennis will be bringing some specimens along with him to his family-friendly lunchtime event. And the joy of seeing that spark of biophilia light up in children is something that, to him, will never get old.
“I love it,” he says. “You can see a little spark there, this sudden interest in the back of the eyes. I’ve been doing this for a long time and now one of the things that happens is that years later, I come across them when they are students in Trinity College. And that’s just amazing.”
- The Critter Shed Podcast will be wriggling around Cork Arts Theatre on Sunday, August 27th at 1pm. Tickets available at www.corkpodcastfestival.ie
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