Field Trip to Nose Hill Park

We saw a vole!

"Voles make an underground subway for themselves with different rooms. I was digging and there was a tiny hole. There was a bunch of snow that covered the hole. I think it was trying to stop the snow from coming in. Then it sat on my foot." ~ Olivia
"Voles eat the seeds out of the pinecones." ~ Nico
"A vole is a small rodent and it lives underground." ~ Alice
"Voles eat the meat off of bones from other animals like coyotes. They also make underground tunnels also known as a subway." ~ Keagan
"They're a little bit bigger than a mouse and it was smaller than a rat." ~ Sage

"They burrow under the snow in the winter. I wonder what they do in the summertime." ~ Clover

"They are active both in the day and night." ~ Kashvi

"They are scavengers like vultures." ~ Nolan

"They live in the subnivean zone (which means under the snow). There are little burrows that go to different places like the bedroom, bathroom, closet..." ~ Charlie

"I thought it was really exciting to see the vole, especially since Sherrie, our guide, had never seen one." ~ Ms Elder

"The roots are ten feet/two and a half meters deep." ~ Bono

"When it rains, the water will go into the soil and stick to the roots. If we dig them out, we will have floods in our houses." ~ Abbey

"Grass is like an iceberg. You only see 20% of it. 80% is underground." ~ Sy

"The roots in plants communicate...they send signals to each other. Some plants put out a chemical when there are predators nearby. This connects with last year's learning." ~ Hudson

"There is a connection between grasslands and wetlands. The roots act like wetlands because they are basically a sponge. They hold water and they filter it." ~ Suzi

"Roots are a good food source for voles and other animals." ~ Nolan

"I think it was the bison; it's good for them to eat the stuff and it's also good for the roots. It grows faster than it usually does." ~ Olivia

"Some people call it an underground forest." ~ Alice

"The people that came here wanted to farm here because it had such very good soil. Also, the land acknowledgement...the more we come around and acknowledge the land and give back to the land because the land gives to us, the more we add to our land acknowledgement." ~ Artur

"The soil is so good that we sold it to other countries." ~ Charlie

Here we are taking a challenge. We were screaming while running after taking only one breath." ~ Raj
"We did this to regulate/get warmer." ~ Sage
"Blackfoot people did this to show that they were worthy of hunting the bison." ~ Abbey

"This is a coyote bone that I found on the side of the pathway. We think that a dog picked the bone up and dropped it there." ~ Keagan

"This was a little bit of a copy of sneaky fox. We had to try to get the water bottle (the pinecone) away from Sherrie. We were acting as voles." ~ Mila

"It was a very great game like red light-green light but played with different characters." ~ Kashvi