The Courtyard

I have a beautiful view from my classroom. Instead of look at a parking lot, the playground, or a dumpster, my windows face the courtyard. A beautiful little green area with minimal distractions. Today, however, there were major distractions. When I say major, I mean major!

A few minutes before lunch, we were working on some math. I happened to glance out at the beautiful courtyard for a moment and caught a peculiar view out of the corner of my eye. The principal and assistant principal were out there, holding a massive blanket, slowly creeping up to my window. What on earth was going on? I wanted to stare and figure out what they were doing. I decided against it, as 25 recess-anxious fifth graders would have been unable to control for the next ten minutes if they got a load of this!

So, I did my best to not draw attention to the twilight zone of a scene going on outside my window, while keeping a curious eye on it. Then, all my slyness was blown when out of nowhere, "BANG," something smashed into one of the large classroom windows. Of course, everyone turned to see a large bird of some sort go flying past the remainder of the windows. It was a safety hazard as all 25 kids jumped up and ran to the window.

I promised them I would find out what the flying creature was while they were at recess and lunch. And, once they realized that the bird-like creature was gone, they calmed down some. Just in time to go out to recess.

Turns out the bird was actually a peacock. A student at school had it as a pet. It got loose from it's cage and somehow ended up at school, in the courtyard, and banging into my window. This makes me wonder if, like so many animals, peacock's have a very strong sense of smell and this peacock actually tracked down the kids at school.

Who knows? I don't know anything about peacocks, except that for the rest of the day, it was walking around the roof of our school.