Bluebirds and bobcats and bears -- oh my!

Students in Mike Sustin's West Geauga High School environmental science class traded in their trendy sandals and suede shoes for decidedly not-fashionable rubber mud boots not long ago.

At 7:30 a.m., the first period class darted outside to check bluebird boxes near the tennis courts and a vernal pond in a wooded area of the school campus.

Opening one bluebird box, Greg Polan let out a shrill scream as a nesting bird flew out and startled him. The rest of the class laughed, then gathered around to look at the nest and tiny eggs.

Another box had a sparrow's nest -- an interloper that the class permitted to remain.

"We took a vote early on," Sustin explained. "The students decided that if it had a nest and no eggs, we would evict the nest. But if it had eggs, we would let them stay and hatch."

The morning's assignment also included carrying aluminum poles that will form the corners of an exclosure -- a fence to study the effect browsing deer have on delicate woodland plants.

Sustin picked up two poles and had no problem enlisting two of the boys to carry two more. A female athlete Amber Drenski picked up another. Jessica Stevens carried a box with flag markers, a measuring tape and other supplies.

Once erected, the fence will allow existing plants to grow naturally without the deer eating away at them. In contrast, the plants outside the fence will likely be "trimmed" or completely eaten.

Drenski and Stevens put their heads together to "do the math," a geometry problem to check the accuracy of the pole placement to form a near-perfect 20-foot by-20-foot rectangle in the wild.

"Why do we have to do this? It looks right," Drenski asked.

Sustin said he had to report back to scientists who were planning to use the information gathered from the school project. End of the year...