NAPOLEON - The walls are alive at the C.D. Brillhart Elementary School.
Wild animals leap, gallop, climb, fly, and creep along the hallways.
A buffalo thunders across a wall. A rhino climbs upstairs. Ants march toward a classroom. An enormous snake slithers for 33 feet, curls around a corner, and crawls up and over a doorway.
Artist Pam Jones has painted dozens of animals on one mural and dozens more on another wall and still more going up a stairway.
A visitor almost expects a realistic lion to roar, an elephant to bellow, a rattlesnake to rattle, parrots to squawk. Two-hundred-sixty-two animals have been painted there by Mrs. Jones, with help from her sister, Jenni Freytag, and her father, Ted Freytag.
“Every time I take a trip down the hallway, I see something different,” says Betsy Redd, principal of C.D. Brillhart.
“It's so wonderful,” Mrs. Redd says, sweeping a hand across the Africa mural. “We never expected it to be this much.”
The four-year project began when Mrs. Redd asked Mrs. Jones to paint murals. They decided to represent each continent with a “couple” of animals.
“It just evolved,” Mrs. Redd says. “She'd say, `There's a blank space here. What do you think of ... ?' and I'd say OK, and she filled it. I knew enough to let her go.”
Warthogs led to baboons led to monkeys led to pythons led to an armadillo led to deer led to a woodchuck, until seven walls for seven continents and then some were filled.
“Once I started, Africa just grew,” Mrs. Jones says. “I couldn't pass up a zebra, couldn't pass up a giraffe.
She and her sister didn't stop until every last peacock, spider, and mosquito was painstakingly painted.
Tiny, hidden beetles challenge curious students to find them. Other animals are up to four feet high. The big snake, a 33-foot anaconda, is full-sized.
“I wanted kids to have an idea of how it would be to come across an anaconda if they happened to be walking along in the Amazon jungle,” Mrs. Jones says.
As a recurring figure, a boy appears in each mural, dressed for that continent - an explorer peering from African foliage, a fur-clad visitor nose-to-nose with an Antarctic seal.
The artist's humor shows up among snarling tigers or lazy lizards. Next to a real-looking mouse is a tiny cartoon Mickey Mouse. Sleeping bats are drawn hanging from an electrical conduit.
And Mrs. Jones's whimsy is evident at classroom doors.
An octopus holding a light bulb is painted at science teacher Linda Martinez's room.
An inch worm on a ruler is for math teacher Judy Tussler.
For teacher Gail Salmon, Mrs. Jones drew - what else? - a fish.
Winnie the Pooh shows the way to reading teacher Jennifer Burkhart.
A comical cleaning lady is at the custodian Thelma Yovich's door. At nurse Janice Knepley's room are bugs under a magnifying glass. “Yes, it's head lice,” Mrs. Redd says.
Mrs. Jones, 41, got plenty of drawing help from her artist sister, Jenni, 25, and advice from her father, who she says has a sense of how animals appear in different positions.
Mrs. Jones says she was painstakingly careful to be accurate in portraying animals, except for one goof.
“I started with a breed of zebra that has a bull's-eye pattern on its tail, but I decided to draw a different striped rear end. It turned out I had mixed up two separate zebra breeds and invented a new animal.”
The artist, who lives near Holgate, has painted murals at the Fulton County Health Center, Napoleon High School, and northwest Ohio businesses.
She was paid from an Ohio School Improvement Award grant and the school's budget.
The next project will be the Brillhart school gym's climbing wall. Mrs. Jones says it'll look like a mountain.
Animals? “Well, yeah,” she says. “There'll probably be a mountain goat or a snake on it.”
First Published December 24, 2001, 11:19 a.m.