It was a normal day. Junior Renea Frakes went through her everyday morning ritual to get ready for school.
She got in her chilly car. On her drive to school, she couldn’t even fathom the excitement that would await her in the Journalism Room at Hastings High.
When Frakes walked in the door, everything seemed perfectly normal; even down to the vague scent of someone’s Chinese food from yesterday’s lunch. So she decided to take a seat next to a computer and work on some homework. Frakes was uninterrupted for roughly 20 minutes, when junior Will Parker arrived and proceeded to shake things up.
Like Frakes, Parker didn’t sense anything out of the ordinary about his favorite room in the school.
He put his backpack on a hook, got his notebooks out, and sat down at the table towards the back of the room.
He was staring off into space, when his eyes drifted upwards. Parker looked at the ceiling when he noticed a small, brown creature hanging from the ceiling.
“Oh, it’s just a fake bat. People play all kinds of pranks in the Jroom,” Parker said to himself.
After studying the assumed “fake bat” for about a minute, Parker came to the realization that the bat was, in fact, very real and alive.
“IT’S A BAT,” he said while simultaneously sprinting out of the door and down the hall in hopes of finding the journalism adviser, Cathy Davis. Much to his dismay, Davis was not in her room. Distraught, Parker sombered back to the Jroom.
“I hate bats because you don’t know if it’s going to wake up and fly at you and give you rabies,” Parker said.
At this point, the clock read 7:45 a.m., and more and more journalists were arriving to school. There were two groups of journalists who were infatuated with the bat, who was quickly named Roger the Bat. Among these students was senior Olivia Nicolarsen, who stood as close as possible the bat, taking pictures to post on social media.
“I just knew the bat would wake up because of the people and noise, and it was going to fly all over,” Parker said.
The other group anxiously stood right outside the door in the hallway, fearing Roger and begging the brave ones to give them their things that were unfortunately left behind.
A group of stressed high school journalists is an amusing sight to see, regardless of the situation.
Although extremely distressed, a few yearbook staffers made their way to the main office to ask for some assistance. While waiting for head custodian Jay Jenkins, a number of people were becoming increasingly brave. The Jroom was THE hotspot this morning, and everybody wanted to see Roger the Bat; not only journalists. Many students crowded around the door which was propped open, and the lucky ones were able to squeeze their way through to see Roger on exhibit.
In a matter of minutes, the excitement was halted when Jenkins arrived with a bat-catching net on a pole. With one quick, swift movement, the experienced custodian swooped Roger away to safety.
“It’s always good to do the humane thing, to relocate them. I relocated the bat to the other side of the football field so he can’t make his way back into the school,” Jenkins said.
Because this was the second bat Jenkins had to remove in the past three months, he believes that we are letting bats in by leaving doors open for long periods of time.
Although bats add a touch of excitement and mayhem to the day, they are not ideal to live in a school.
Students and teachers can be at peace, now, because Roger is flying free.
