Earth Day entertaining

There was no cake or ice cream, but the kids didn’t seem to mind. To celebrate Earth Day, fourth graders from Jefferson and McKinley Elementary schools spent the day at Allen County Community College’s farm north of Iola. They were treated to fun in the sun and a hot dog lunch by Allen County Farm Bureau, Allen County Conservation District, the collegiate chapter of the farm bureau and Marmanton Valley Future Farmers of America.
The students went from station to station, learniing about ecology and the environment.
They learned about water flow and erosion — how rivers form, and what can pollute them. They saw cows and pigs and a pony. They pretended to be quail and were chased by an orange-vested “hawk” who tried to swoop down on them as they attempted to reach a pile of candy at the far end of a field.
“I’ll give you a hint,” called out Dustin Mangolos of Kansas Wildlife and Parks. “If everyone goes at the same time, some of you will live. If you go alone, she’ll pick you off.”
At the riverine station, a model landscape depicted the merging of two streams into a single river. As the flow began to cut into the walls of the landscape, children excitedly pointed out eroding banks.
Probably the most interactive station was one on freshwater mussels.
Don George, district fisheries biologist with Kansas Wildlife and Parks, handed out shell after shell of local river mussels, and taught the students something about each. George showed how the musslels, which feed on plankton, nestle themselves in mud banks. Without feet, he said, they can move only a few feet in a few days using water propulsion. If farm pollution washes into streams, he said, they have no way of escaping and suffocate to death.
The kids were eager to fit their fingers into the mussell shells, each species with a different pattern of groves. They oohed over a heron skull and snapping turtle shell.
The day’s events were best summed up in a question by George.
“Isn’t biology the coolest thing?” he asked the youthful crowd. “Yes!” they all replied.