I am a public school teacher. I teach at a fairly large middle school in Oakland, California. My classroom is a double-wide portable building, so that makes me trailer trash.
Every time it has rained this year (and that has been quite a bit), I get water pouring in at one side of my classroom where the seam is between the two trailers. See, the seam runs the length of the room, but on one end there gets to be a pool of water where it doesn't drain properly when it rains, and so we get to experience the rain forest.
And now I've got a skunk family living under my classroom, too.
So I stepped out a few minutes ago to scamper across the courtyard to relieve my teacherbladder. Right outside my classroom door (but fortunately off to the side and not right on my porch) was Flower, sniffing and gnawing on something on the ground. So I closed my door quietly and scampered off. When I came back there was an entire classroom of kids coming back from the library walking by, and they all had to react to the skunk's presence in an age-appropriate manner, which is to say either scream or try to approach it. All this while I was waiting for them to go back to class so I could follow my PLAN.
My PLAN was to make a lot of noise and scare it off before it got startled by my presence. It worked! I even got to educate a kid who was trying to get past the skunk to get into the art classroom in the Sopisticated Way of Dealing With Urban Wildlife (ie; make a lot of noise and yell).
All in a day's work for -- PUBLIC SCHOOL TEACHER!
