Lexington, KY - My daughter, Ginny Allen, teaches preschool children at St. Michael's School in Lexington. In years past she has taught middle school children in Episcopal and Roman Catholic schools and has a good cache of stories from those times, but her best store of anecdotes is about the preschoolers, who often have few inhibitions in speech or actions. Ginny knows she must be ready for unexpected challenges from the children. And sometimes from other sources.
A few years ago, in the late August heat and humidity, the teachers set about preparing the school, in the basement of the church, for its opening. The first event was to be an evening for parents to receive information and ask questions. As the teachers worked in their classrooms, they began noticing an unpleasant odor. They searched for the source and found nothing. The smell got worse, permeating the hallways and classrooms as parents' night drew near. "You could walk into the basement and it would wrench your stomach, it was so bad," Ginny said.
The source was traced to one classroom. The teachers took the room apart; they even looked in the heating-cooling ducts. They cleaned everything again but the place still smelled disgusting.
Parents' night came and about 30 people crowded the room. Both windows were open. "We had Lysol-ed everything, so not only did you have the smell of something rotting, it was mixed with the smell of Lysol. Needless to say, it was a pretty quick meeting," Ginny said.
The next day Theresa Hart, school secretary and chaplain, and Ginny arrived early. They looked the place over carefully again. Finally, Theresa got a chair and climbed up to look in the window wells. "Screaming, she fell off the chair into my arms crying, 'There's a devil dead possum,'" Ginny remembered. (Surely no one would have said 'opossum' under the circumstances.)
What to do? Ginny and Theresa were the only staff present. They found a shovel and looked the situation over. Theresa was still shaking. "We tried to do it ourselves, but nope," Ginny said, "the smell was too bad, this was nasty." So they decided "a man should do it." Theresa's husband was unavailable, but my son-in-law, Chris, came and got down in the well and got the creature out.
"For a long time I wanted to get Theresa a little stuffed possum and put it on her desk," Ginny said. "You can't buy a stuffed possum. You can't find them because possums are looked upon as disgusting and evil creatures. You can buy snakes, and what's worse than a snake?"
The next year there was a live possum in the window well, walking back and forth looking in as the 3-year-olds entered the classroom. "Look," said one, "a kitty cat in the window." Another said, "No, it's a big rat in the window."
Ginny had to explain to the children what it was so they didn't go home and say, "We have rats at school."
Last year Ginny came into school one day and immediately recognized "the smell." Again, it was late August. It was bad, with "tons of flies." This time a hapless father who had brought his child to school early was enlisted as possum retriever.
The bushes around the window wells have been removed, and no more possums have shown up. Ginny, theologizing, said, "Well, they didn't go there to die. They went there looking for something and they couldn't get back out. I felt sorry for them because they had a sad ending. We're all God's creatures and even the ugliest and most repugnant deserves some dignity, rather that dying in a school window well and being thrown away in a garbage bag. It was kind of sad."