The intrepid Kratt Brothers will tell wild tales on Bainbridge.
“Being the creature” does have its risks.
Take the time Chris and Martin Kratt were exploring the jungles of the Amazon for their popular television show, and Chris was bitten by a snake that not even the natives recognized.
Poisonous? Harmless? Nothing to do but wait it out and see.
Or the time the brothers were in India, riding atop elephants to film the activities of a tiger mom and her cub. Leaning over to get a closer view, Chris lost his perch and went sliding down the pachyderm’s rump toward the waiting jaws of the tigress.
“Martin was just filming the tiger, thinking this was great,” Chris said, “having no idea that I’d just slipped off the back of the elephant.”
Finally realizing what had happened, Martin did what any brother would do – secured the camera and its valuable footage, before helping Chris clamber back to safety.
The Kratt Brothers bring tales of animal adventure to Bainbridge next Saturday in a fund-raiser for the Kids Discovery Museum, the signature events in a weekend of family activities around the island (see box).
With three popular nature series to their credit, the Kratt Brothers may be the most recognizable pair of faces on public television.
For you kids, Chris is the one in the green shirt, not to be confused with older brother Martin in blue.
For you moms – and this is said to be the subject of much contemplation on lonely afternoons at the ironing board – Chris is the handsome one, not to be confused with the other handsome one.
“And the smart one, and the athletic one,” Chris adds.
For all their adventures in the wild, the brothers’ rise to fame as creators and hosts of “Kratts’ Creatures,” “Zoboomafoo” and “Be the Creature” followed a less-than-exotic trajectory.
They grew up in suburban New Jersey, watching “Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom” and romping around the yard. A preschool class well-stocked with hamsters, ducklings and hermit crabs fired their imaginations, as did spirited science teachers in their later schooling.
While still in college – Chris studied biology, Martin zoology – the idea for a host-driven animal series began to germinate. So the brothers bought a camcorder in 1989 and headed to Costa Rica for the summer to see what they could find.
They edited the resulting footage into a series of short subjects and began shopping them around. Five years of rejection notices from television networks followed, but the Kratts got a much warmer response when they took their programs directly into classrooms.
“Kids are great critics, and very direct,” Chris said. “They told us what they thought was stupid and what was funny, and we developed it from there.”
Finally, in 1996, a Kratt Brothers pilot found its way to the home of a Maryland public television official, whose 4 year old went ape over it.
Fifty episodes of “Kratts’ Creatures” followed on PBS.After that came 65 episodes of “Zoboomafoo,” in which the brothers were joined by a titular talking lemur in a series aimed a pre-schoolers.
The Kratt Brothers aesthetic could be described as the Anti-Disney. Rather than anthropomorphizing the creatures of the wild, imbuing them with human qualities, the brothers try to put themselves and their audience into the animals’ place instead.
That theme – animals as sentient personalities rather than mere objects of scientific study – is explored further in their latest series, “Be the Creature,” on the National Geographic channel.
“Even from those early days, what we liked to do was play and pretend we were the animals,” Chris said. “That’s one thing we like to do even to this day – step into their role and see what life is like from their perspective. I think all kids like to do that.”
Another theme that has carried over from the Kratts’ childhood is that kids don’t have to go too far to see animals in their habitat. Even two suburban brothers in New Jersey could find hours of educational enjoyment playing with box turtles and raising orphaned possums in their own yard.
“No matter where you live, even if you live in the city, there is ‘creature adventuring’ to be done,” Chris said.
Like their core audience, their inspiration remains children. Moved by a little girl who sent them $3.19 and a note asking that they use it to help save animals, the Kratts parlayed the gift into a charitable foundation and a 1,200-acre sanctuary for grizzly bears in Montana.
Next Saturday at Bainbridge High School, the Kratt Brothers will relate their adventures in the Amazon. Kids can participate by playing the role of the animals, and those who want to get ready now should practice making the sounds of giant river otters, scarlet macaws and howler monkeys.
KiDiMu’s Mary Alice Cohen said the Kratts were invited to Bainbridge by popular demand of the museum’s clientele.
“They’re just so much fun,” she said. “They’re really enjoyable and charismatic, and they have quite a following.”
After the second performance, the Kratts promise an autograph session that will last as long as there are kids in line. Cohen jokes that KiDiMu will charge extra for moms who show up without their kids.
“The phone calls from these women are, ‘Really? The Kratts are coming? I love Chris Kratt!’” she said.
For his part, Chris says he enjoys meeting the moms – and the dads.
“They tell us our show has created activities the family can do together,” he said.
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Wild things
The Kratt Brothers present “Adventures in the Amazon” in shows at 10:30 a.m. and 12:30 p.m. Feb. 10 at the Bainbridge High School gym. The event is a fund-raiser for the Kids Discovery Museum; tickets are $15, or $55 for a family four-pack, by calling 855-4650. An autograph signing follows at 2:15 p.m. for every kid (and mom) who shows up.
Other family events next weekend include Roving Reptiles at the Kids Museum, “discovery hikes” at IslandWood, and free admission to the Bainbridge Island Historical Museum. For the full schedule, see www.kidimu.org.
