It may be snowing outside, but inside FHS, spring has sprung - at least in Linda deKort's biology classes.
Twenty-seven baby chicks have hatched in deKort's room as part of an experiment to see if the chicks will imprint on selected students.
Each school day, the students will handle and nurture the chicks in an attempt to get the chicks to attach their keepers. The test of success will be whether, at the end of the experiment, each chick will follow its keeper down the hall.
"We will try to imprint the chicks to our heels, so they'll follow us around," said sophomore Danielle Diesenroth. "We only have them for five days, when (sophomore) Jennifer Stebbing will take them home."
deKort's said her classes also are caring for tadpoles and a spider and its young.
"We found the spider in a bag of bananas from Costco, so we think it's tropical," said DeKort.
The experiments also have proved that it takes a village to raise the young, and that cooperation means survival.
"Some of the chicks hatched at night, so the night janitors took them out of the incubators," said Dekort. "The janitors saved their lives, because they could have died from the heat."