Sugar Gliders: A Matter of School Safety

I am sitting in my office when Kerry Taylor, one of the many office professionals who help me keep my life organized, comes in and says, "Some girls just told me that XXXXX has a squirrel in his locker."  Immediately Ray Steven's song "The Mississippi Squirrel Revival" came to mind, but I brutally beat it back into my subconscious as I started thinking about the implications.  It could be infested with fleas, lice, or any number of nasty little things.  It could be rabid.  It could be peeing or pooping in the locker.  It might get out.

About that time, Royce McDougall, our counselor, looked in the door and said, "I hear we got a squirrel problem?"  I chuckled and said, "Apparently." 

"We gonna go get it?"  I stood up and grabbed a pair of leather safety gloves and said, "I guess we have to."

We found a rubbermaid container with a lid. and with Nancy Komornik, Royce's secretary coming along for the show, we went to the student's locker, joking about what we would find.

With my box in my gloved hands, I waited while Royce opened the locker door.  When no crazed tree rat jumped out screaming, Royce looked into the locker.  He looked at me and said, "There's no squirrel here."  He shut the door, and we walked back to the office. 

I remember saying, "I'm almost disappointed.  I wanted to wrestle a wild animal."  That got chuckles form the other two.

When I got back to my office, I asked for the boy who owned the locker to come to my office.  He came in, relaxed, and said, "Hey Mr. Satterly, what's up?"

"XXXXX, why would some girls say that you have a squirrel in your locker?"

He looked surprised.  "I don't have a squirrel in my locker!"

Having worked for 22 years with this age group, my next questions seemed inevitable.  "So what do you have in your locker?"

"A Sugar Glider."

It sounded like drug paraphernalia, or something, so I asked something intelligent, "What?"

"A Sugar Glider.  I can show you on You Tube."

I felt like I was drowning.  "No, just tell me what it is."

He went on to explain that it is a hamster-like creature that could glide from tree to tree.  I looked it up on the internet and found a Wikipedia entry.  "They're from Australia.  What is it doing here?"

"I dunno.  I thought it would be cool."

Somewhere in my head, a vein pulsed, promising a whopper of a headache.

"Go get it."

He came back into my office with a drawstring bag.  "You're not going to freak out, are you?"

I cocked an eyebrow at him and said, "Me, freak out over an animal?  No."

He opened the bag and pulled out a fleece hunting hat.  He handed it to me and said, "Be careful, they're fast."  Kevin Pollack does a great impersonation of Christopher Walken that talks about marsupials being fast, and the memory of that bit made me grin as I opened the hat.  A tiny pink nose and two bulbous black eyes poked out of a fold in the hat.  Yup.  He had a live critter in his locker.  Turns out he brought it to school on the school bus, and had kept it in his locker all day.

I told him that bringing a live animal to school was not a good idea.  His response was, "Why?  It's not in the handbook."  The headache creeped closer.  I had him leave, telling him I would keep the creature and have his mom pick it up.

I had his mom called to come pick up the creature, and Kerry told me that mom was NOT happy!

There was no school punishment forthcoming for XXXXX.  Sometimes parental punishment is worse than anything the school can do, especially when it was 'no harm, no foul' at the school.

Disaster averted!