Mouse

Recently, and I can't remember where, I read about a teacher who had a rodent in her classroom but nothing could be done about it because it was against district policy to kill animals? Is this sounding familiar to anyone?

Anyway, we have no such policies at our school. (PETA doesn't have many chapters in the third world, you'll find.) And soon, I'm going to have to request a trap for the little guy who has invaded my classroom. When I'm here by myself on Saturdays and it's quiet, I see him come out and run back and forth. (I'm not sure why I'm calling him "he.")

The reaction of my big tough middle schoolers when he does show himself on a weekday is pretty funny. Some of them scream or climb on chairs. Yeah, it's partly for effect, but some of them seem genuinely scared.

Once, when I was teaching much younger children, a mouse ran by during class. We were reading Prince Caspian aloud at the time, and I promptly christened the mouse Reepicheep. Not the brightest move, as it turned out, because a few days later we found our little friend, dead, in the doorway. It's never nice to find dead things in your classroom, but dead things with names are more upsetting than anonymous dead things.