"It's rubbery and it moves like an accordion," the Hermitage seventh-grader said while studying what her teacher, Nancy Bires, identified as a cranefly larva.

It's dark gray with what appear to be small antennae, but they actually are pincher-like appendages that help it cling to rocks.

"Marie, can I hold it?" asked Hilary Landfried, who relieves her friend of the now-motionless critter.

"Why don't we put it into the water," she said, dumping it into an ice cube tray. But, soon after, Marie scooped it up for further study.

Ms. Bires, environmental coordinator for Hermitage School District, put a smaller cranefly larva under a microscope, exposing a translucent shell, dozens of legs and tiny hairs.

The larvae and other creatures were pulled from Pine Hollow Run by seventh-grade Quest students and 12th-grade environmental biology students, who examined the stream and some of its tributaries on the site of a proposed Wal-Mart Supercenter on North Hermitage Road, across from the Cookery.

Students, using screens, nets and buckets, caught the bugs that were kicked up by other students wearing rubber boots and brushed off rocks. They rousted mayfly larvae, a kind of crustacean called a scud, surface- living water striders, crayfish and minnows.