Photos: Whitehouse Nature Center Celebrates the Season with Annual Fall Festival

October 29, 2025 Elly Cantoni Community, News, Photos 0

Two young individuals are crafting at a table covered with colorful masks and markers. In the background, lots of pumpkins create an autumnal setting.
Albion students take part in coloring masks at the Whitehouse Nature Center Fall Festival. Mask decorating was one of many activities the festival offered (Photo by Elly Cantoni).

From pumpkins to bats, the Whitehouse Nature Center (WNC) covered all of the fall bases this weekend at their annual Fall Festival.

The event invited the Albion community to enjoy classic seasonal activities including pumpkin carving, mask decorating and a lunch. The event was joined by the Leslie Science & Nature Center, who put together a special exhibit of live animals.

The festival, coordinated by WNC Director Misty Brooks, provided lunch for visitors along with the festivities. Some of the treats included caramel apples and donuts.

“It’s a fun way to get outside, let people carve pumpkins, come down and see the place and get to know what we do,” Brooks said.

Along with Brooks, Nature Center student employees also worked the event.

Ypsilanti fifth-year and WNC student employee Stef Etheridge said the goals of this event were “getting more people to come out to the Nature Center and building better relations with our community.”

Fellow student worker Clarkston senior Kacey Kernan said her favorite part about the event was working with the kids.

“(The festival) gives us an opportunity to bring in new young Britons by showing them that we’re here and here for them,” Kernan said.

Two children in princess costumes stand in a hallway with adults in the background. In the foreground is a girl in blue smiling at the camera, with a younger child in pink behind her.
Albion youth dressed up in their princess Halloween costumes. These are just two examples of costumes worn on Saturday (Photo illustration by Elly Cantoni).
A carved pumpkin with a surprised face sits on a wooden table, surrounded by carving tools. Sunlight casts shadows over the pumpkin.
One of the pumpkins carved by an Albion elementary student. “My favorite part would have to be the pumpkin carving. I love a good pumpkin carving, even though it’s kind of disgusting,” Etheridge said (Photo by Elly Cantoni).
A woman wearing gloves smiles while holding a hedgehog above a transparent enclosure, interacting with a child in a colorful shirt. Decorations of bats cover the back window.
A Leslie Science & Nature Center employee shows off a hedgehog to an audience. According to Kernan, the Whitehouse Nature Center partnered with the Leslie Science & Nature Center due to their shared goals in raising awareness and understanding of the natural environment (Photo by Elly Cantoni).
A fuzzy tarantula with striped legs crawls on a textured piece of bark inside a glass enclosure.
A fuzzy special guest from the Leslie Science & Nature Center. Many of the younger visitors spent time in front of the tarantula enclosure on Saturday (Photo by Elly Cantoni).

 

About Elly Cantoni 3 Articles
Elly Cantoni is a first-year writer at Albion College. She is currently studying as a psychology major, an english minor, and is on a pre-law track. She loves to discuss current events and many other unique topics including: dinosaurs, Chipotle, and her love of the Oxford comma and why the AP style should start utilizing it.

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