Quercus Quire brings together science, song and silliness to delight students in Santa Rosa

One would think that having to follow a rousing romp of a song that includes references to poop in the natural world (replete with a clay model of said scat) would be a tough sell in a room full of elementary school kids.

But when that song is “Bird Rap,” the audience is in good hands.

For this number, Granny D, elsewhere known as Darcy Reinier, and Granny E, also known as Ellie Hermann, both bedecked in half-masks and faux feather drapes, sang as they danced and strutted around the Bellevue Elementary School multi-use room Friday morning as the kids went wild.

I’m an owl, I eat rodents and so much more

I spit out bones and fur on the forest floor.

Since I can’t turn my eyes, I turn my head,

Two hundred sixty degrees! Yeah, that’s what I said.

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Ellie Hermann of Quercus Quire gets a rousing yell out of Bellevue Elementary School students on Friday in Santa Rosa. Hermann taught at the school for 27 years, (Kent Porter / The Press Democrat)

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It was part of a 35-minute assembly fusing song and science, all following the guiding principle that young students can never get enough exposure to the delights of the natural world. That the all-volunteer Quercus Quire serves up information via songs and rhymes, some that include references to animal poop, it’s a can’t-miss proposition.

“I am still driven to teach science to children,” said Quercus Quire director and retired elementary school teacher Ellie Hermann.

“I think it’s so important,” she said. “My goal … is to make kids fall in love with nature so they can learn to protect it. If they love it, they will care about it, and if they care about it, they will protect it, and this planet needs that.”

Established in 1984 as the brainchild of former volunteer and music teacher Eleanor Decker, the Quercus Quire was an offshoot of the volunteer docent program of the nonprofit Audubon Canyon Ranch, which used to oversee the Bouverie Preserve in Glen Ellen. Audubon Canyon Ranch changed its name to All Hands Ecology last year.

The idea was to fan out into the community, essentially bringing lessons of nature that docents might have presented at the property, and deliver them free of charge in school settings. The assembly integrates song, props like hand-painted signs and stuffed animals, and movement to teach kids about the water cycle, decomposition, the food chain, the beauty of dirt and how animals of the wild use their noses.

For more than 40 years, the Quercus Quire calendar has been booked solid. Offering the program free of charge, the choir focuses their outreach on schools that might not otherwise get access to similar assemblies, Hermann said.

When the choir sends out their sign-up offers for the school year, their 12-13 time slots get gobbled up almost immediately, she said.

Retired teacher Ted Milkoff found the choir through Hermann and her husband, Bob, and their mutual love of the ukelele. Bob Hermann is a bass player in the Quercus Quire band, but also the group’s booking agent and resident sound man.

“I think our message is basically to bring science and nature to kids and get them involved in it and excited about it,” Milkoff said. “That’s the most important thing to me.”

So on Friday morning, Milkoff held a giant stuffed snake and slithered it up to the front row of kindergarteners who were singing along to a ditty penned by the Santa Cruz-based Banana Slug String Band called “Spiders and Snakes.”

As Milkoff danced with the snake, the kids sang along to the words: “Some snakes eat insects, some eat rodents, too. If they are in your garden, they’re probably helping you.”

Reinier, who plays guitar in the band as Granny D for “Bird Rap,” said music is a great way to deliver information.

“I remember things from when I was a child that I learned in a song or a rhyme,” she said. “I think moving with the music really gets it ingrained.”

And beyond that? Music is just flat-out fun.

“Music has so many mental and physical benefits,” she said. “We know it releases serotonin and also makes our brains sharper.”

And speaking of sharp, this choir may be lighthearted but they don’t take their show lightly.

The choir meets the Monday before every live show. For two hours they run through the program beginning to end, tweaking movements and timing, and making sure everything is sharp. On show days, they arrive at least an hour before go time so they can run through songs, line up props and go over any last-minute modifications.

No shade to the late James Brown, but the Quercus Quire might be the hardest working band in all-volunteer showbiz circles.

Bellevue Elementary School principal Laura Webb was won over.

“It was great. They had a lot of rich vocabulary,” she said. “It was really fun, but educational for the students. It was very active and students could participate as well.”

“It was really developmentally appropriate for our students,” she said of the 120 kindergarten, second- and third-graders who were on hand Friday morning. The school’s first-graders were on a field trip.

Sara Clegg, among the longest-serving members of the volunteer choir, said the music piece, for her, is crucial. Singing to and with students, hearing their voices and watching them follow along, is why she is still showing up to these gigs some four decades later.

“I like music and music has been cut so much in public schools,” she said. “I get emotional about it.”

And don’t let the volunteer part fool you. This choir is good. Their sound is beautiful while also a ton of fun.

“Anybody can join and there is no trying out or anything,” Ellie Hermann said. “The tryout is ‘Would you like to be in the choir?’ And if they say yes, then you pass.”

As serious as they are about what they do and how they do it, there is an element of play among the group that can’t be denied. Not everybody has the guts to dance down a row of kindergarteners with a felt mask on their face, or shimmy in front of 120 people holding a giant stuffed snake.

But for the ones who are up for singing about dirt and poop and hollow bird bones, the screams of kids who know which nose belongs to which animal and how rain is created is priceless.

You can reach Staff Columnist Kerry Benefield at 707-526-8671 or [email protected]. On Instagram @kerry.benefield.