‘Life Finds A Way’: Local pols parody ‘Jurassic Park’ to celebrate Skokie’s new wetland garden
We open on a crowded Jeep rolling to a curbside stop in Skokie as Daniel Biss, wearing a red bandana, safari hat and aviator sunglasses, looks out with a stunned affect.
The Democratic candidate for Congress (IL-9th) nudges Kat Abughazaleh, his former opponent in that race’s primary, and the camera pans to Niles Township’s brand new wetland prairie garden as the theme music from “Jurassic Park” swells.
“You did it. Crazy sons of b—— did it,” Patrick Hanley, the Democratic candidate for Illinois State Senate, says, quoting a line from Jeff Goldblum’s character in the film, Dr. Ian Malcolm, to join Biss’ Dr. Alan Grant (Sam Neill) and Abughazaleh’s Ellie Sattler (Laura Dern).
The video parodying a scene from the iconic 1993 movie also stars Bonnie Kahn Ognisanti, playing John Hammond (Sir Richard Attenborough), as she leads the exploration of the Niles Township Government’s new “People’s Prairie.”
Kahn Ognisanti said she worked with the Lee County Farm Bureau and a handful of other agencies to secure approximately $80,000 in grant funding to transform a derelict stretch of land near the township’s headquarters at 5255 Lincoln Ave. into the wetland.
The 400-square-foot patch was previously filled with garbage and invasive plants, she said, and now has trails, educational signage and about 5,000 native plants designed to absorb stormwater, support endangered trees and restore the land to its wetland-prairie state.
“That’s the point, right? It’s bringing everybody together. It’s celebrating the prairie,” Kahn Ognisanti said of the “Jurassic Park”-themed video, which received more than 1,000 upvotes and more than 200 comments after it was posted on an Illinois Reddit forum.
“(It’s) also showing, while we’re serious about conservation, we also don’t take ourselves seriously; we can have some fun, and getting people to just be interested in it and come out.”
Kahn Ognisanti, who is wearing all white in the video as she reprises Attenborough’s character, said the Lee County Farm Bureau first got in contact with her in 2023 to discuss the prospect of creating a pollinator garden.
As Niles Township’s headquarters already had a pollinator garden, Kahn Ognisanti said she continued liaising with the Lee County Farm Bureau through State Rep. Jennifer Gong-Gershowitz’ (17th) office about transforming the township’s unused plot of land.
While most of the grant funding ultimately came from the Lee County Farm Bureau, the Cook County Farm Bureau, Illinois Farm Bureau, ComEd, Openlands, Morton Grove and Skokie also provided resources as volunteers spent the last three years planting and preparing the land.
Two weeks before the township was set to hold a celebratory grand opening of the People’s Prairie on June 27, Khan Ognisanti said her husband, Michael Ognisanti, pitched the idea of creating a promotional video to the theme of “Jurassic Park.”
Ognisanti is a professional cinematographer and so he enlisted various of his friends to donate their time and film equipment to help shoot the scene, Kahn Ognisanti said. Ognisanti reportedly wrote the script, edited the footage and color-corrected it for post-production value.
The video features Abughazaleh, Biss, Hanley, and Illinois State Rep. Kevin Olickal (16th).
“I don’t believe my eyes,” Aughazaleh says in the video as she walks into the garden. “Is this a sedge basin?”
“This is fox sedge and it’s excellent for flooding mitigation,” Kahn Ognisanti answers.
Reached by The Record, Biss said the video “shines a surprising, quirky light on wonderful work that means something” and draws people into the project before they even have a chance to ask themselves whether they’re interested in natural prairies.
“I love the prairie, I love the township, Bonnie is a great friend and I’ve never been hesitant to humiliate myself before so why start now,” Biss said in explaining his decision to join in the video’s cast.
Hanley likewise said it was inspiring to see the township take on the project of growing a native prairie, which he started volunteering at last year. He also appreciated how the wetland garden has unified community members and politicians under one common cause.
“And then to create this hilarious video to promote the prairie, to make sure that people know about it by bringing together politicians who had just been in competition just months ago, I think it really speaks to the role of township government and the role of, you know, prairies.”
Or perhaps as Hanley says in the video, quoting Dr. Malcolm:
“Life finds a way.”
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Samuel Lisec
Samuel Lisec is a Chicago native and Knox College alumnus with years of experience reporting on community and criminal justice issues in Illinois. Passionate about in-depth local journalism that serves its readers, he has been recognized for his investigative work by the state press association.
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