Walking into my classroom I saw a piece of paper taped to the white board that said, “Ms. Bakke, I don’t like your attitude. Until you change we are going to be keeping Biscuits …….. and ……… Gravy.”

 

Ugh…. sometimes working in a school can be so exhausting. Biscuits and Gravy are squirrels. While they might not be living, breathing entities, Biscuits and Gravy do bring joy into my life and hold a very special place in my hear. Biscuit is an orange squirrel that someone got in a happy meal. It was a character in a cartoon that I have never seen so his name probably isn’t even Biscuit. Sidenote…. how is it possible that a movie exists with a squirrel character central enough to the plot to warrant a happy meal that I have not heard of? Anyway, Gravy is a piece of cellophane that surrounded a pack of post-it-notes I bought at Target. The cellophane had a picture of an origami squirrel. Most people would throw that away. I am not most people.

 

As with any school hijinks I had to decide if the “perp” was a student or an adult. Little known fact, schools are not immune to office style hijinks. GFW’s Special Education is especially notorious. Looking at the ransom note again I started to think about who would have a problem with my attitude. Both adults and students have commented on my ability to be annoying. Is being annoying an attitude? I decided that my colleagues would know the futility in trying to change my annoying personality. You can’t teach an old dog new tricks and all that. Students, on the other hand, might think it possible to get me to change. The culprit definitely had to be a student.

 

During homeroom I decided to take the direct route and flat out asked my kids if they knew what happened to Biscuits and Gravy. “Someone stole your breakfast?” was the response from one of my kids who hadn’t “bought in” to the fact that his homeroom teacher was obsessed with squirrels and named them. I told him that B&G were members of my squirrel family and they had been squirrel-napped. I passed around the ransom note so they could see how serious this situation was. Of course, they had no idea who had written the typed note.

 

Second hour I decided to take a different approach. I decided to use a teacher’s greatest weapon. Acting. I decided that if I acted like I didn’t care about squirrels they would give up. What good is a ransom for an unwanted item. It would be a tall order trying to convince anyone that I didn’t love squirrels anymore. I would need to channel the greatest actors of our time, Brando, Streep, Heidi Bakke. I started class by telling the students that I had watched a nature program the night before about hedgehogs. I continued to tell them about all the fabulous things about hedgehogs. I told them about living in Alaska and having neighbors who had an amazing hedgehog. I then went on to tell them that I decided that hedgehogs were better than squirrels and that I was going to sell all my squirrels and use the money to fun my new hedgehog lifestyle. The students looked at me with blank stares. I mentioned that I was going open a store on a “squirrel lovers” website and that if they had any squirrels just collecting dust I would add them to the sale.

 

“Ms. Bakke, I have some squirrels!” said, the poor unsuspecting student.
Excellent. Case closed. Squirrels returned!