They are just made of sugar, aren't they??

In a place as "rural" as Samford, wildlife abounds.

We have possums sleeping in the balconies, crows and noisy miner birds handling the lunch morning tea clean-up, wild dogs hunting down and mangling local sheep and horses, and feral cats living in the school drains.

Anyone who knows cats knows they don't like being wet; and today we had a flash thunderstorm. The drains began to overflow, and that brought out the feral kittens in force. They huddled miserably in the drains, hiding in the barely concealed pipes, whingeing and moaning about the wet; and attracting hordes of our young students, eager to know what was making that pathetic mewling sound under the storm grate.

When I first started at Samford, we had a bit of an adventure with our fera cat population: a kitten became trapped under the building housing the infirmary, and eventually the wainscotting had to be ripped off to gain access to the wee thing. The story does, of course, have a happy ending as the kitten was adopted by a specialist teacher; but the wilderness adventure at our school goes on...

As a cat lover, and one who has lived with over 4 kitties at a time, I am at once concerned about the feral cat population at school, and reassured that they are doing just fine. But today, during the sudden and violent rainstorm, the local cats rebelled and attracted quite a bit of attention to themselves.

The kids at school, particularly our grade 5 class (the one outside which the drain in question is located) adopted a whining, well-concealed kitten as their "cause celebre".

In fact, they even lowered a TOY into the drain, stuffed with ham and cheese:






I have to say, these kids at school are a loving, caring bunch of monsters........