Pet Disaster Day

Hold on. I'm trying to breathe out this knot in my stomach. I get knots in my stomach when I'm stressed, and this day was a stressful day...for me and the critters at least! For the kids...it was probably more exciting than stressful.

Let me explain.

During breakfast time, one of the teachers came in with a tadpole that her son caught the night before.

We named him Teddy. Teddy the Tadpole.

He's in the middle of transforming...he actually has two very small legs beginning to sprout.

Teddy got lucky.

 We also have a class pet named Gordo. He's our hamster. 

This is a picture of him in his old cage. We now have a fancy plastic cage complete with a tunnel and an upper level for him to climb up to.

On this fateful day, somebody KNOCKED OVER the hamster cage. Our fancy plastic cage completely broke apart, spilling all his hamster bedding, hamster food, and of course, the hamster.

Luckily, he froze in fear, so I was able to catch him before he ran under a shelf or got stepped on. The kids all froze under my instruction, while I put him in his hamster ball. Then we cleaned up the mess, put the cage back together, and put poor Gordo back into his cage.

He may have had a minor heart attack. 

Excited by all the commotion, Gordo ran all around his clean cage, digging the bedding all over the place, and finally jumped onto his wheel. He was running so fast that he kept falling out of the wheel, much to the delight of the thirteen kids surrounding his cage! 

He really made an impression: 

...because a few minutes later, the classroom was filled with giant, child-sized hamsters.

Of course, hamsters need a cage.

As if that wasn't enough excitement for the day, we headed outside, and found a surprise in our garden:

A baby bird!

Here he is up close...

This is the nest he must have fallen from. It is right over the garden.

He had many visitors!

It took a lot of will power and fear of being sent to the office for them not to poke at the bird with a stick. For some reason, every child who came to see the birdy felt the urge to poke the bird, or throw something at it! Poor birdy! I ended up spending the outside time guarding the baby bird from curious little "pokers."

Sigh.

Ok. The knot is almost gone.

Have you ever had any surprise critters in your outdoor area/ classroom? I would love to hear about it! 

Happy playing!