Hendemonium
Submitted by Sarah D. Bunting on February 12, 2008 – 10:55 AM35 Comments
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“I wrote 63 songs this year. They’re all about Jeter.” Just kidding. The game we love, the players we hate, and more.
From Norman Mailer to Wendy Pepper — everything on film, TV, books, music, and snacks (shut up, raisins), plus the Girls’ Bike Club.
Helping public schools, winning prizes, sending a crazy lady in a tomato costume out in public.
Monologues, travelogues, fiction, and fart humor. And hens. Don’t forget the hens.
The Tomato Nation advice column addresses your questions on etiquette, grammar, romance, and pet misbehavior. Ask The Readers about books or fashion today!
I’ve (re-)discovered a few things over the course of the recent Days Of Rage. Some of them are great!
I found it while researching a murder (…this is a sentence I have more frequent use for than most), the true story of a neighborhood legend from my childhood. I grew up in a leafy, …
My favorite part was how the pranksters thoughtfully scattered chicken feed all over the hallways.
Best. Senior prank. EVER.
Thanks for sharing this, Sars. The story of our brave displaced flightless avian sisters must reach a wider audience. *FREE THE RHODE ISLAND 85*
According to the school district spokesperson, the fine won’t be “chicken scratch” — awesome!
This? Made my morning. Chickens! Thanks Sars.
Can’t find a link to my home town local paper, but a few years ago it got handed similar multiple bad puns on a plate. A grain ship was unloading in the harbour; a sudden wind rose while the crane was in mid air; a body of semolina rose freakishly, en masse, sailed horizontally a bit, and then lost momentum directly and only over the roof of the nearest children’s school. Semolina rain was more than could have been hoped for as it was, but a light warm summer rain then fell, and a pouring-consistency semolina pudding formed on the roof and began to dribble slowly and cartoonishly over the sills and past the windows. Sigh. Doesn’t happen like that often enough.
“The students will come back to roost tomorrow.”
Awesome.
Hee! I love my city. =)
It seems wrong that the special ed students still had to go to school while everyone else went home. There can be no justice when chickens roam free but special ed kids are cooped up!
I feel kind of bad for whatever farmer they stole the hens from. The bruising from handling and from roosting on a hard floor is not good for the hens if they’re to be used for show or for meat.
On the other hand, they probably got more free range roaming the school than they would stuck in tiny cages.
I kind of want to adopt some of them. I could finally get Bizarro Dad to build me that chicken coop I’ve always wanted.
My parents live in Maine and told me about this one:
http://www.boston.com/news/local/maine/articles/2008/01/04/high_school_cancels_classes_due_to_snow_prank/
I think its even better.
That was a pretty good prank, but a flock of wild turkeys lives in my neighborhood, and we’ve had a few incidents of turkeys getting into my kids’ school and running down the hall.
We tried a similar prank my senior year, but due to translation problems with the chicken supplier, we ended up with a crate of freshly dead chickens. No one wanted to touch them and they stunk so badly we just threw them away and planned a new prank (pickup truck load of beach sand dumped in front of the school, with beach chairs and an old fridge).
There was a high school near my town that had a similar prank but with one twist: instead of chicken feed the floors were spread with those popping firecrackers. (The kind you throw on the ground that makes a little popping noise like a cap gun.) Now THAT was classic.
Haha, I used to live up the street from that school. I wonder how they got ahold of so many full-grown Reds? They are not the cheapest of chicken breeds..
Incidentally, the pool nearby (that was left undrained throughout the winter) was filled with goldfish when the lifeguards came back for the summer a few years ago. Wonder if it was the same kids?
When I was a freshman, the senior prank involved a large amount of cockroaches let loose in one of the atriums. We didn’t get a day off of school. No, we had to walk through the nasty, dead, crunchy roach pile for the rest of the day.
Senior pranks ended for a while after that.
Something similar happened at my school when I was in high school, but it was a mixture of that chicken prank and the numbered pigs prank. The first time they left a live chicken in someone’s locker and when the guy opened the locker, out came a very angry chicken. A week later, they let four chickens lose in the senior wing numbered 1, 2, 3, and 5. Our principal chasing chickens up and down the hallway was possibly the most amusing thing that ever happened at that school.
@ Val — I know you didn’t mean the floor was scattered with whippersnappers AND they let loose chickens, too…..
But in my head? All I can see is a hallway filled with chickens doing that “Oh my Jesus why is the ground exploding?!” sort of hoppy-dance that you do when you unexpectedly step on a whippersnapper.
It’s the funniest thing I’ve imagined in ages.
Every year the wrestlers would put thier coach’s VW on the roof of the school. Every year, year in, year out. When that VW finally gave up the ghost, he bought a Caddy. Carry THAT, wrestler boys!
I feel sad for the chickens & the explosives…
And I hope the RI Reds find happy homes!
Just to illustrate how geeky I am, I just remembered that this stunt was also used in an episode of “Boy Meets World.”
But still….hee! It’s a pretty good senior prank.
This is probably funnier and much less gross than the recent senior prank at my old high school, which involved picking up a deer that had been hit by a car, spray-painting it with “07” and leaving it on the interior stairs during final exams.
Great prank! At least they didn’t try to chuck them out of a helicopter.
We thought of doing this for my senior prank (also in Philly), but we vetoed it. I think there were a bunch of people scared of the chickens.
We hometown folks like to think of it as Chick-Phila.
That’s awesome! And very creative. I thought the numbered pigs prank was great, too. It’s kind of nice to see kids being devious for fun instead of for evil, like you hear too often on the news.
Wow, I am officially old after typing that last sentence.
@ amy: Yup, they did both. As I understand it, when the chickens went to peck at the fireworks they kept making popping noises. The noise is what led the students & teachers to find out about the prank. I guess no one had gym first period.
Less than a mile from the high school in my tiny Vermont hometown is an army training base. The senior prank that no one can ever beat is when some kids hotwired a tank (I don’t know!), and parked it on the front lawn of the high school.
Katherine – 1, 2, 3, and 5! That’s brilliant. I have tears in my eyes from laughing silently so the rest of the staff don’t think I’m insane (they may already, but they’d be too nice to let on).
So just how long did your principal spend looking for #4?
@Lori: We’re talking weeks that they were convinced that there was another chicken hanging out in the school, especially since it was the second chicken prank that year. They regularly searched lockers, air ducts…no chicken #4.
They also never caught the guys who did it because no one wanted to turn them in. Unwritten law of high school at its finest. I have a bad feeling someone is going to ruin it for those kids though.
What of it? WHAT OF MY HEN?
K., what, you mean that the students were … chicken?
I totally laughed at this, but was I the only one who was depressed by this: “Deltoro said it was wrong to release the hens at the school, but, she added, “It’s better than hearing about a shooting.”? This is what they have to worry about – chickens vs. gunshots?
This is way better than the senior prank my fiance’s class played in high school (which was in Florida). A group of students put dead fish in all the air conditioning ducts on the campus. After an incredibly smelly morning, the school administration had to turn off the whole AC system to remove the now-rotting fish and clean the ducts. Breathing fish-air in South Florida in June while we all baked with no AC? Gross!
@RJG: Unfortunately… yes. I love my city, but our murder rate has been making national headlines.
@cayenne: Oh, the humanity!