Students at Towamensing Elementary School in Towamensing Township had a special reward for working so hard to raise money for the Carbon County Environmental Education Center. Rennie, a 19-year-old bald eagle, came to visit them with naturalist Franklin Klock.

“You should be very, very proud of yourselves,” he said. “This is more than we expected.”The initial count of the fundraiser was several hundred less than the final total of $902.“If we got $100, we would have been happy,” Klock said. “This is beyond our expectations.”The fundraiser came about because the second-grade children were studying eagles.Krystle Meglio, one of the two second-grade teachers, said it all started with the book “Eagles and Eaglets.” The children read the book and then watched the baby eagles hatch on the Hanover Eagle cam set up by the Pennsylvania Department of Conservation and Natural Resources.Then they saw a local news story about a bald eagle that had accidentally swallowed lead pellets when it ate a dead animal that had been killed by a hunter. The pellets caused lead poisoning and it died.“This happens to eagles all over the world,” Klock said. “It’s a big problem.”The children wanted to do something to help the birds, hence the hatching of a fundraiser for CCEEC.With help and donations from their parents, the children made eagles’ nests out of cupcake paper liners, pretzel sticks and jelly beans. Each nest was placed in a goodie bag and included a fact about eagles. The nests were sold for $1 each.Meglio said the children had a week to take orders, and the top salesperson was Katie Fritz. She sold 31 nests and brought in $135 in donations.Fritz said she asked friends and family members if they would like to buy a nest or make a donation.“They thought it was really neat that we were doing it,” she said. “I thought it was really neat, too.”During Rennie’s visit, Klock asked the children what they would like the money to go toward.They had three choices: educational programs for other students, food for the animals or improvement projects at the center.The children voted by raising their hands.A couple children voted for the first and third choices, but food for the animals won out.Klock said he was really encouraged to see that children would go out of their way to help not only people, but also the animals.“It’s a lifelong lesson that these boys and girls will take home with them, and it really touches our hearts,” he said.