HS Students in Mrs. Cooper's Zoology class headed to Morris Creek today to look for benthic macro-invertebrates for an Oklahoma Blue Thumb winter bug collection event. This activity happens twice a year as part of the creek's monthly biological, chemical and physical monitoring by Mrs. Cooper and her HS Science students. Benthic macroinvertebrates are species that live at the bottom of a creek or stream which have no backbone and are large enough to see with the naked eye. Robert Barossi, Blue Thumb Educator describes winter bug collecting in a March 2017 blog post, "The entire process is fun and fascinating and a great way for volunteers to get an even better idea of their stream’s health. They can see for themselves just how much life is actually in their stream and how diverse that life is (or isn’t). These bugs tell us a lot and become an essential and important part of the high-quality data Blue Thumb provides to Oklahoma and the Environmental Protection Agency." Mrs. Cooper and Mrs. Parks both attended a two-day Oklahoma Blue Thumb Volunteer training held in Ada, OK on August 18 and 19, 2017 and support the monthly monitoring of Morris Creek, a local creek close to Howe Public Schools. For more information on Oklahoma Blue Thumb, visit http://www.bluethumbok.com.