Finn Elbert at Coyote Peterson Show in Minneapolis
Some kids will drop everything to see Princess Elsa. Others will wait in long lines to see Buzz Lightyear or Marshall from Paw Patrol. And my nearly 5-year-old son Finn does love many of the popular characters from TV. But then there’s Coyote Peterson.
The host of Brave Wilderness on YouTube, Coyote has gone to South Africa to hang with hippos and lions. He helped a sloth poop and frolicked with a wild ocelot in Costa Rica. He went spelunking to search for a rare cave salamander in West Virginia, has caught rattlesnakes in Arizona and is particularly adept at catching snapping turtles in his hometown of Columbus, Ohio. And what’s really helped his show garner its 10 million+ subscribers are the episodes devoted to getting stung and bitten by various insects and animals. It’s all in an effort to educate viewers about what happens when you encounter these insects and animals—and what to do if it happens to you. Getting stung by a bullet ant or bitten by a giant desert centipede? I’ll leave that to Coyote, thank you very much.
Every night before bed, we watch an episode of Brave Wilderness with Finn after reading a book or two. There are currently 400 videos, and we’ve watched most of them. Even the ones where Coyote eats nasty food like durian fruit and then barfs them up to the delight of small children everywhere (and to the disgust of their parents). So when I heard that Coyote and his crew, Wilderness Productions CEO Mark Vins and wildlife producer Mario Aldecoa, were headed to Minneapolis for the first leg of their Midwestern live tour, I knew we had to go. The icing on the cake? They were going to let Finn and me go backstage.
We got to the Pantages Theatre well in advance (for once), and headed with a team member behind the stage, through a few doors and down the steps to the green room. We opened the door, heard Coyote’s voice and . . . Finn turned around and ran back up the steps before he tripped, lying sprawled across the concrete stairs.
“Hi!” Coyote beamed to me, shaking my hand. He turned to Finn: “Hi, Finn, are you OK?”
My kid picked himself and ran the rest of the way up the stairs, pressing himself silently into a wall. Bear in mind, the motto of the show, which Coyote intones after every episode: “Be Brave! Stay Wild! We’ll see you on the next adventure!” Maybe we could meet them and get a picture after the show?
During the show, Coyote and his wingmen entertained the crowd with stories of animal adventures and stings and some clips that audience members may or may not have seen before. At one point, seven kids went on stage to play a game show where they won rubber animals and made Coyote eat Spam from a can. “I want to go up on stage!” Finn pouted. Really?!
Afterward, I convinced my situationally shy kid to head backstage again to say goodbye to Coyote and the crew, promising if he posed for a photo to print it for Show-and-Tell on Friday. “OK, I’m ready, let’s do it!” he said. We headed back down the stairs and, in the end, Finn found a way to be brave.
