Dead Rats and Spiders

The dead rat is still holed up in my wall.  Bright and early on Monday morning, after a chilly, early autumn night, the district superintendent and our principal walked into my room to check out my teaching.  The room, while not wholesomely fragrant, was bearable.  Both men stood in the back, watching my lesson and looking benignly pleased. 

By afternoon, the temperatures had climbed into the low 90's again and the room once again reeked and rocked with the stench of decomposing rodent.  Incredibly, after over a week of an ever rising tide of rotting rodent, no student has yet mentioned the suffocating odor.  Actually, one boy asked yesterday morning if I'd brought a snack for the class -- he said that he could smell something like tomatoes.  I give up.

I've accepted that this rat and I are bound together for the foreseeable future and am resigned to bearing the odor until the passage of time takes care of problem. 

Meanwhile, Sue (my teaching partner) is freaking out more and more because she can hear mice/rats running about her ceiling.  I'm stern about demanding that she keep her lively rodent population to herself.  At this point, however, I'm pessimistic about the whole thing and am sure that they plan to party in the ceiling over her room and then crawl through the pipe over to mine to die. 

Back at Frogpond, it's tarantula season again.  On Sunday evening, as Bruce and I were watering trees by the pond, this pretty spider crossed the path.  We never, ever see them except in the autumn -- and then it's generally a single spider purposefully trekking across the dirt.  I think that we see females that are off to lay their eggs.  One year I caught one and brought her into the classroom to show the children.  She promptly curled up in a little ball and died, so I haven't done this since.  Instead, Bruce took pictures and I put her image up on the big screen.  The class was majorly impressed.  I've become an expert in wowing nine-year-olds. 

Too bad they can't smell a dead rat worth beans.