Cockroach is to mother as hissing is to ______________.

It's that time of year again. I still hate the damned Madagascar hissing cockroaches, though I can at least touch them now. Of course, they had to prove me a liar this time around. The ones we got this year aren't as docile as the ones we got last year (the ones last year, you could throw rocks at them and they'd just sit there stupidly, staring at you. Kind of like 6th graders, actually....) but at least they hiss, which is cool and disconcerting at the same time. The curriculum tells us to tell the kids that they don't have any diseases and they don't bite. Supposed to make the kids feel more comfortable around them. Except.....Brady came up to me and showed me that his cockroach actually did bite him. Bastard drew blood too (that must have been one motherfucking pissed-off cockroach). So much for "they don't bite". If Brady comes down with some rare African sleeping sickness, I'm asking for my money back.

Anyways, we were discussing the hissing behavior in class today. "Why do you think the cockroach hisses? What was happening at that time?" I asked the kids.

Most of the kids could tell me that they were picking up the cockroach, or poking it with a pencil, or trying to shove food in its mandibles to try to get the thing to eat (They have no empathy, I tell you. They're bopping the poor bug on the head with a piece of banana and complaining that the thing won't eat. Maybe they'd eat if I threw a banana at their heads, but most of the world doesn't like being harassed with fruit), and that the cockroach probably hissed to scare them off. Then Devan raises his hand.

"So I think the cockroach is like my mom? Like, when I keep poking her, and she hisses at me to get me to stop?"

Mind you, if I poked my mom repeatedly and pissed her off, I'd probably wake up 5 feet away with a handprint on my cheek and my ears ringing so Devan's probably getting off easy. Might explain his lack of impulse control. But I suppose I should be grateful that he made a real-world connection.

Science Instruction Fail

Missy chased me down one day as I was walking back from the copy room.

"Mrs. W! I have to talk to you!"

"What do you need, Missy?"

A look of frustration crosses Missy's face. "Well, I caught a snail the other day and it just won't do anything!"

Let me start this story by filling you in on a few things. We'd studied snails a few weeks back and the interest level in them was surprisingly high. I guess it makes sense in hindsight: they are kind of cute when you get to know their personalities better (yes, they do have personalities. Mojo, for example, refused to eat carrots, even if he hadn't been fed for a couple of days and that was all you gave him). After we'd studied snail preferences for a week, the students designed a terrarium for them and we filled it with all the things they seemed to prefer, such as dirt, rocks, sticks, and the vegetables they preferred most.

The kids forgot about the snails for a little while, but interest in them really exploded when they started breeding. We found little egg clutches buried in the dirt, which soon became droves of baby snails. The babies could unfortunately fit through the mesh of the cage top and pretty soon were cruising throughout the room and out the door. They found one on the underside of a chair in a room 50 feet away from mine. The students have been pretty good about catching the escapees when they find them and returning them to their home, but we finally had a baby snail adoption day last week to help with our baby snail overpopulation problem.

Back to Missy: she apparently had a snail issue she wanted me to help solve. I'm not exactly an expert (I know they're gastropods, they have a strong preference for cucumbers and they taste good in butter) and I'm not used to doing tech support on a snail, but I'd do what I could.

"What do you mean 'It won't do anything'?" I asked her.

"It won't go," she replied.

Great. That was vague. "Ooook. Well, they tend to be more active at night. Have you checked then?

"Yeah, it doesn't do anything then too."

"Are you misting it frequently so he doesn't go into estivation?" (The kids learned that snails go into a form of hibernation when they get too dry)

Now Missy looks really frustrated. "Yeah, I'm doing all that stuff! I'm misting it, I gave it some lettuce and cucumbers, I put dirt in the cage for the eggs, but it won't do anything!"

Eggs.....? "Wait, are you trying to breed your snail?"

I can tell from Missy's relieved expression that I've hit the jackpot. "Yes! My little brother wants a baby snail but I can't get the snail to lay any eggs!"

"You said you had A snail. You do realize it takes two snails to make a baby snail, right?"

Missy looks at me, dumbfounded, for several moments. "Oh. Never mind."

And now they've ruined the best meal of the day

They were staring at me this morning, the dirty little vermin. I usually spend the first 10-15 minutes of my day at school drinking coffee and eating my breakfast while reading my choice blogs on the computer, but it's hard to eat with a dozen Madagascar hissing cockroaches eyeing your egg mcmuffin. I had to throw most of it away. Sigh, I've been wanting to lose weight anyways.

Oh, you have GOT to be kidding me.....

So I'm planning my science lesson for tomorrow on transpiration when Mrs. Skapinsken walks into the room with a small terrarium in her hands. She plops it down on my desk. The terrarium looks at me innocently, it's newspaper-filled insides concealing the terror hiding inside for me.

Oh shit.....

"Oh please no," I beg her, "can't we skip this lesson? There has got to be another way to teach them about more complex organisms."

She smiles at me, as innocent as the terrarium. "You knew this was coming, it's the next unit. I know it's going to take some time to get used to them so you might as well start handling them now."

Shit shit shit shit SHIT, she's got me there. I did know this was coming, I just kind of hoped it would go away. Damn you FOSS and your innovative curriculum. You absolutely had to pick something guaranteed to scare the ever-loving crap out of me, didn't you?

Madagascar hissing cockroaches.

Mada-fucking-gascar hissing cockroaches.

I managed to skip this unit last year by conveniently falling a bit too far behind. I had to get to the solar system somehow, so I skipped this little experience. Didn't exactly make the principal happy, and I knew I would be paying the piper this year, but it didn't matter at the time so long as I could sidestep my phobia. Well, the piper has come a-calling. Shit shit shit shit SHIT.

Snicker at me all you want, I don't care. You don't understand. Karen left a bunch of these little bastards at school over the summer. You're supposed to leave a wet sponge and dog food in the container to meet their basic needs, but Karen forgot to take care of them for 2 whole months. We all figured the damn things would be dead as doornails. Imagine our surprise when, upon returning, we discovered that they had survived by EATING THE SPONGE. They had even had babies. It's not natural, I tell you.

Janine opened the container and picked one up, looking at me expectantly.

What, we're starting the training now? Shit.

Tentatively, I held out my hand. She gently placed the insect in my palm. At first, I was ok. Then, I heard someone was talking: I was barely aware I had started to speak....

Get it off get it off get it offgetitoffgetitoffgetITOFFGETITOFFGETITOFFGETITOFF!!!!

Janine quickly removed the cockroach from my hand (I noticed that it had barbs or something that it used to cling to my skin. Great, something else to get used to). She dropped it back into the terrarium. Her shrug was apologetic, but her smile was definitely smug.

"I'll be back tomorrow," she promised. "In the mean time, you might want to at least try to touch them, if not pick them up."

And out she went.

She's enjoying this, I know it.

How the hell do you take care of tadpoles?

One of my students brought me a bunch of tadpoles, which irritated me at first but darn it, the little squirmers are just so cute! I bought a great terrarium for them and everything, made sure to have the student bring in pond water so they lived in their natural environment and changed it regularly. I even bought them special tadpole food (I'm such a softie). Unfortunately, they'd grow their back legs, then their front legs, then they go belly-up in their artificial pond. The last of them died today, having ignored all the tadpole food I gave them. Any ideas what I did wrong?

The tadpoles

So Stephan brought in a coffee can of tadpoles the other day. At first, I was pretty annoyed: he hadn't said a word to me and I was completely unprepared for the little squirmers. Still, I found a mason jar to keep them in (the can was already starting to rust) and I put them out on display for the other students to see.

The problem is, tadpoles need to eat something, and Stephan kept forgetting to bring in pond yuck for them. The poor things were starting to starve: I found a dead one floating on the top of the water. I was going to skim him out when I noticed the other tadpoles eating him. I was kind of grossed out by this, but I left the corpse in the water. Hey, at least it was food.

Stephan finally remembered to bring in some pond grasses yesterday and I put them in the water. The tadpoles perked up by the end of the day, so I guess it was the right thing to do.

Finally, I decided to google up how to take care of them. Turns out, the young tadpoles love to eat the gunk growing on the pond grasses but the ones with little legs are carnivorous (When you put it that way, it sounds almost scary, like that Steven King story about the rain of frogs with razor teeth). So now I have to find tiny bugs to feed to them. The website mentioned aphids, but I'm not quite sure where to find aphids. It's not like Petco sells them.

Anyways, it sounds like it won't be too much of a problem if I can't find aphids. In the event that there is no food, the largest tadpole will consume his brothers. The students will get an education (in a macabre way), and I get at least one frog out of it. Win.

The day everything blew up

Every so often, students bring....pets to class.  Believe me, I don't sanction this: most pets are terrified of 30 kids staring at it.  The only reason I had a corn snake class pet is that snakes have no eardrums and most snakes don't seem to give a shit who holds them.

One day, Shaw brought a mouse to class, in one of those tiny cages I use to transport mice for Corneilia's (the snake) dinner.  You're really not supposed to keep a mouse in a transport cage for more than a half-an-hour or so, but here's Shaw with his mouse, in a tiny cage and no water.  The poor thing looked terrified.  I could hardly teach with the dehydrated mouse cowering in the cage, so I paused class long enough to inform Shaw of basic mouse care, find a larger container for the mouse and get it some food and water.  Goldfish crackers are probably not on the approved diet list for pet mice, but it was the best I had.

Unfortunately, by trying to care for the mouse, I broke the cardinal rule of teaching: always keep an eye on your class.

Unbeknownst to me, our resident football star Cody was showing off for his friends.  He pretended to be constipated by making groaning noises and scrunching up his face as if in effort (I swear, I don't know where they get these ideas).  It had the added benefit of turning his face bright red, I heard later.  It had the unexpected side effect of bursting a blood vessel in his nose.

My first sign of trouble was when I saw Cody's hands cover his nose.  The rest of his table did the same.  I assumed at the time that someone at his table had farted and they'd work it out somehow.  Until, I noticed the blood dripping from Cody's hands.

"Cody, bathroom NOW!"  I yelled and a relieved-looking Cody bolted from his seat and raced for the door, dripping the whole way.  As luck (and state funding) would have it, I had no sink in my classroom, which meant I also had no paper towels (forget Kleenex: a snowball has a better chance of lasting in hell than a box of Kleenex in a classroom during cold and flu season).  And now I had a puddle of blood that everyone apparently wanted to use as finger paint (note to self: have the social studies teachers include "biohazard" on next week's vocabulary list).

There's still a mouse on my desk, in case you forgot.

Thankfully, the custodian break room is right next door so I didn't have to go far to get some help.  I told Danny to keep everyone away from the blood (including himself) and knocked on the custodian's door.  But.......this required me to take my eyes off my class for a crucial minute, and God had one more joke to play.

Let's rewind to Cody's mad dash for the door, shall we?  Monique, one of my girls, has a secret crush on Cody (Monique is not a subtle person, so by secret, I mean everyone including the snake knows Monique likes Cody, but Monique thinks no one else knows).  As Cody ran for the door, Monique gasped in shock and dismay.  I didn't notice it at the time, but someone else did: Anbir, a boy at Monique's table.  While I was outside of my room talking to the custodian, Anbir started chanting "MONIIIIQUE LOOOOOVES COOOOOOODY!  MONIIIIIIQUE LOOOOOOVES COOOOOODY!"  Monique, pissed that her "secret" was blown, stood up and decked Anbir.  By the time I popped back into my room, Anbir was picking himself up off the floor and Monique was winding up for another pitch.

I'm not sure what the mouse thought of all this.

I managed to get Monique and Anbir down to see the principal (not at the same time for obvious reasons) and the custodian got the blood cleaned up without anyone dabbling in it and the mouse did eventually get his larger cage, water and Pepperidge Farms Goldfish Crackers.  After that, I decided we were having a movie day.

If only I'd had Ratatouille with me that day.