Bwak!

The kids at my high school pulled some pretty elaborate pranks back in the day. The most memorable was the kidnapping of Manny, Moe, and Jack from the neighborhood Pep Boys and their subsequent erection on the roof of the library building at our school. But never, never, never did anyone let livestock loose in the hallways, like these intrepid Northeast Philadelphia High School students did.

At five a.m. today, one of the school's janitors reported to work at the Cottman Avenue high school, only to find fifty chickens and a generous amount of bird feed (and, most likely, the smelly aftereffects of that combination) filling the school's hallways. It's unclear how alarms weren't tripped, but these birds were apparently deposited at the school at around 9:30 last night – giving the fowl plenty of time to make things rather foul.

Classes were canceled for the school's 3600 students while the school administrators were left to deal with the mess. The staff of Swenson Arts and Technology High School will be caring for the birds at Fox Chase Farms while the birds' rightful owners are sought, or until the chickens can be adopted. (Hmmm... that's one kind of practice baby I hadn't previously considered!) The perpetrators could face heavy fines for their prank—a school surveillance camera caught the thing on tape, although the students involved have not yet been identified—but it seems that the general attitude at NPHS is more of amusement than anger. After all, as Joy Deltoro, a secretary in the school's college counseling office said, "It's better than hearing about a shooting."

Image Credit: Flickr user gari.baldi