Floaters Only Please

Our task tonight was a slightly strange, but very cute sounding one: to make rafts for water voles. What a way to end our January of Goodness!

The evening started out eventfully when we arrived to find the gates locked, and Jonathan locked inside them! After some vague attempts to climb the gates (fortunately stopped before anyone got hurt), we were provided with ladders and started scrambling over. Amusingly the later arrivals treated this all as perfectly normal and just stepped straight onto the ladder, after posting their cakey treats under the gates :-)

Once inside in the warm our task was explained more fully - these weren't just any rafts, they were most likely little Voley's new favourite toilet spot! We may have speculated that St Nick's had a bet going to see how bizarre a task we would believe (rat jetskis next perhaps?) but we were assured it was a real thing.. These rafts would help replace missing habitat and provide a nice safe place for our furry friends to relieve themselves, hopefully helping the fledgling populations in Heworth Holme and St Nick's to grow and thrive.

The rafts were constructed from sheets of old plywood sandwiching polystyrene (like a giant custard cream), which meant lots of sawing, snapping and taping. Plus the all important task of naming each raft (with a pun, obviously).

Becky and I competed for the least straight sawing line, deciding it was the saw's fault for being "a leftie", while others employed some more advanced skills such as sitting on the plank they were sawing (and somehow remaining intact). Meanwhile there was much fun being had karate chopping the polystyrene, while each person periodically yelled out a vole/toilet/GoodGym related raft name: favourites being Vole Patrol, Floaters Only, Little Vole's Room, Rafty McRaft Face and other delights.

At the end of the night we had 30 beautiful little rafts, and had completed our 302nd (we think) task in January! We celebrated with some amazing vegan flapjack courtesy of Huw. We look forward to seeing our little floating lavs in the streamways soon (hopefully in the form of a vole obstacle course..)