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Peters Township Cadettes build birdhouses for Mingo Creek County Park

By Harry Funk staff Writer hfunk@thealmanac.Net 3 min read
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Showing off the finished birdhouses are, front, from left, Sienna Bricker and Eliana Beck; back, Allie Kaylor, Mackenzie Witmer and Layla Henson.

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Layla Henson, left, and Mackenzie Witmer work on a birdhouse.

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Eliana Beck, left, and Sienna Bricker work with a powered drill.

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Mackenzie Witmer, left, and Layla Henson display a finished birdhouse.

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From left are Layla Henson, Mackenzie Witmer, Traci Kaylor, Allie Kaylor, Jon Witmer, Eliana Beck and Sienna Bricker.

Some feathered friends are going to be pleased thanks to a group of Girl Scouts from Peters Township.

Six Cadettes in Troop 52480 have built seven wooden birdhouses, and on Sept. 29, they plan to mount them in optimal locations at Mingo Creek County Park.

The eighth-graders at Peters Township Middle School – Eliana Beck, Sienna Bricker, Layla Henson, Allie Kaylor, Thomasina Moncheck and Mackenzie Witmer – worked on the project toward earning the Girl Scouts of the United States of America’s second-highest honor.

“The Silver Award you do as a group, and you want to gain confidence and skills to help the world around you,” Beck said. “The Gold Award is the highest level, and it’s more independent.

For Cadettes, girls in sixth through eighth grades, the Silver Award represents the culminating activity before they move on to become Seniors during their first two years of high school.

The Troop 52480 members agreed building birdhouses would be a good project as a way to help wildlife while learning firsthand about carpentry. For some of them, the experience represented their first with power tools.

For others, not so much.

“My dad lets me use power tools sometimes,” Beck said. “At one point, in front of our house, for Christmas, we built a Mary and a Joseph and a baby Jesus.”

Bricker also has a bit of background.

“When I was little, my dad used to let me hammer nails into a board, just to teach me how to do it,” she said. “I’d never really done anything like put something together before.”

With some parental guidance, the girls succeeded in their construction endeavors, as just a few issues crept up along the way.

“We had some problems with the wood splitting, but we resolved it,” Henson said, acknowledging the power tools also were a first for her. “It was actually really fun.”

Kaylor and Witmer, first-timers as well, concurred.

Because of COVID-19, the girls have been meeting virtually, and getting together to work on the birdhouses in August represented the first time in months they had seen one another in person.

“We stayed outside,” Beck said. “That way, we were able to kind of stay apart, and it worked out well.”

The Cadettes who worked on the project have been in Girl Scouts for varying lengths of time, mostly starting as Daisies, kindergartners and first-graders, and Brownies, for those in second and third grades. Juniors are in fourth and fifth grades, and they strive toward earning the Bronze Award.

Part of the Peters Township girls’ efforts in that regard involved making blankets for a dog shelter, and overall, the youngsters have the opportunity to participate in a variety of activities promoting citizenship and leadership.

“I like to go to places where we talk to younger Girl Scouts,” Witmer said. “I just like kids.”

The national organization, in fact, encourages such undertakings by offering Mentoring Awards for Scouts starting in fourth grade.

And preparing young ladies for leadership roles is nothing new for the Girl Scouts of the United States of America, which was founded in 1912, just one year after its male counterpart.

Of course, the Cadettes of Troop 52480 are well aware of their heritage, and they are doing their best to continue the positive actions of the generations preceding them.

The birds in Mingo Creek County Park will be grateful.

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