While some people play April Fools pranks on their friends, Lois Lindberg likes to have fun with the participants in the April Fools hike at Sagamore Hill National Historic Site. The first prank came when the hike began, as Lindberg showed a small group of adults a bird’s nest filled with what looked like robin eggs. “There’s only one way to find out if these are real,” Lindberg said, popping one into her mouth. While the gag was meant to fool youngsters, the adults laughed, realizing that the “eggs” were candy-coated chocolate.
Before joining the Sagamore Hill team, Lindberg worked as a curator of natural history for Nassau County parks and museums. After taking an early retirement, she was looking to do more of what she enjoyed, which led her to join Sagamore Hill as a volunteer and nature program leader.
During the hike, Lindberg and fellow naturalist Wendy Albin took the group on a tour of the grounds that Theodore Roosevelt and his family once enjoyed. The hike included an open field that was once a pasture, the old orchard site, then headed down the nature trail to Cold Spring Harbor and back around.
Throughout the tour, Lindberg and Albin delighted the groups with fun facts about the indigenous plants and wildlife, and had plenty of puns to share. “This is a gneiss [pronounced nice] rock, but don’t take it for granite,” Lindberg cracked at one point.
Other jokes included placing a stick of butter in a cup next to a buttercup plant, and pictures of a dragon and a fly to indicate where dragonflies live.