A Fowl Smell

Monday morning I went to work and spent about an hour in my classroom before the students arrived. I usually do this. But when the students came marching in following the morning announcements they all grabbed their noses and began to complain about the nasty smell. I had a very bad cold and could smell nothing since Friday. Often the carpet has an icky odor and then there is the funky smell of 10 year-old kids after a hot recess that has permeated the atmosphere. But no...this was evidently different.

Another teacher comes to my room on M-W mornings for an hour to give an extra lesson on writing to try to boost our school's fifth grade writing test scores. (She figures by starting on them in fourth grade, there's a better chance to get some improvement for fifth grade.) Well, when she stepped in the door, she too declared "Ick---something really smells in here--like the bottom of a bird cage, only worse." I stepped out and got the custodian. He concurred---bleh.

Evidently the pigeons whose babies we've heard cheeping in our air conditioner vent had reached a critical mass of guano, or perhaps there had been a fatality in the nest. Something foul and fowl-ish was wafting down from the air conditioner vent and the room reeked. Lucky me with the head cold! We opened the doors, I sprayed Febreeze all around. It didn't help much.

Then, just after her lesson finished, as we were starting math, a half-inch long maggot dropped from the vent and plopped onto a boy's desk at table 3. EEEKK!!! I calmly scooped it up onto an index card, folded the card over and stapled it shut into a little envelope. With ten minutes the fat juicy maggot had stretched itself thin and was wriggling out between the staples. DOUBLE EEEK!!! I dropped the whole thing into a cup.

When the students went to the library at 11:00 I went to the office with my maggot friend and had a cow. Bad plan. The next day I brought in homemade banana bread to mollify the secretary whom I'd alienated with my shouted "Why AREN'T maggots an emergency for maintenance!!??" I was directed to go yell at the principal because she (the secretary) didn't make enough money to get yelled at. Oops.

So--the solution? I moved out of my room with my class and their books to a teacher's room who is on track break. That worked for two days. Then I moved to another room because someone needed the previous room for something else. Today we had a field trip. But the rest of the week we're camping in a tiny room.

I've seen e-mails that indicate that perhaps next week some contract crew will come and remove the cause of the wretched odor and then someone else will come and put a wire grate over the opening the pigeons used to gain access to the air ducts. But not necessarily next week.

No, maggots are NOT an emergency. Sigh. Seven weeks to go.