Day 166: It Followed Him to School One Day...

You know how the song goes.  The next line says, "It made the children laugh and play..." 

Well, I can assure you that what followed my student (or rather, hitched a ride) to school on Thursday did NOT make the children laugh and play.

Thursday morning, Day 167, started out at any other school day.  The children had come in and unpacked, and were beginning morning work.  Toward the time of the ringing of the late bell, one my students yelled that there was something in his backpack.  This as a colleague had come in to ask a question.

She was closest to my student at the time, as I was at my desk going through folders, so she stepped over to take a look.  I put down the folder I was looking through and came over to see what the commotion was.  (As you can imagine, by this time, any student who was in that area wanted to take a look.)  We shooed the children to their seats (or the back carpet) and began to look for the creature.  By this time, the late bell rang, so my colleague went back to her room and I proceeded to look for something out of the ordinary.

As I turned to tell the students who had come in during the commotion what to do about unpacking, the object/creature came out of one backpack and began to crawl on the backpack next to it.  Of course, the student who had initially told me there was something there began yelling...which set off a chorus of "There it is!"

The "It" in question was a large hornet that somehow made its way into my student's backpack and managed to travel inside said backpack without being smashed.

Anyhow, it flew out of the backpack and buzzed angrily around the one side of the room.  Which sent my second graders scurrying to the opposite side of the room, yelling and sounding like a herd of animals.  At which point I held up my hands (while keeping an eye on the insect) and told them to calm down. I then told the students who normally sit by the coat rack to have a seat on the back carpet and work there.  Then I opened the door and a window to try and coax the hornet out of the room. Eventually it left the room (I think!) and we began our day.  I say I think it left because we didn't see or hear it past 9:05 or so, and we haven't seen it since.

My only hope is that it didn't hole up somewhere...