Thanks for LaCroix cleanup

To the editor:I would like to thank everyone who participated in the Cape LaCroix Creek Cleanup April 21. I appreciate the time and effort from the 114 participants who ranged in age from 3 to 80 years old. This was definitely a communitywide effort that included families, Girl Scouts, Boy Scouts, 4-H, Parents Without Partners, the Ozark Society, Alpha Phi Omega and the juvenile office as well as Cape Girardeau Conservation Nature Center teen club members, volunteers and staff. People traveled from Fredericktown, Benton and many towns in between to help us with this endeavor.

I would also like to thank the Southeast Missourian, KFVS12 and Mississippi River Radio for their help with publicizing the event and Brock Davis of the Cape Girardeau Parks and Recreation Department for providing the lunches and T-shirts.

We picked up 40 bags of trash and 35 tires from Cape LaCroix Creek. We also found swing-set parts, a tractor tire, metal scraps that would fill a pickup, two shopping carts, landscape timbers, a tetherball pole, a bathtub, 50 feet of electrical wire, driving range carpet, a port-a-potty door, a window, two bicycles, a soccer ball, an 18-wheeler mud flap and a river otter.

We hope to make this an annual event with less trash to pick up each year, and I look forward to seeing you again next spring.

SARA SCHEPER, Education Specialist, Conservation Campus Nature Center, Cape Girardeau