The hallways are filled with stings, swings, and sounds of students running for their lives as the animals take over Loudoun County.
Animals ranging from insects like wasps to furry critters like skunks and mice infest the school leading to Loudoun County getting shut down. Lately, students have been embracing the truth about wasps in the school. There seem to be many wasps in gyms, classrooms, and hallways disrupting the students’ work time. These pests grow in number by the minute and security found out that the reason for this is the many wasp nests discovered in the school building. There are six wasp nests found so far and eleven students have been injured by them. Two of these students were allergic to these insects putting them in a very dangerous position.
On January 25, one of the students, Kelly Kurry, got stung while running away from two wasps on her way to class. Kurry got repeatedly stung until an ambulance came and took her to safety. “These creatures are taking over County and risking students’ lives, something must be done,” Oliver Ollie confides.
Kids are now bringing bats, sticks, and whatever they can swing to prevent the wasps from harming them. These weapons can be dangerous not only to the wasps. “I turned the corner and a bat was in my face!” junior Peter Pickle said while sitting in the nurse’s office. As time goes on it gets worse.
In the first week of February, all students were required to wear hazmat suits as precautions. Many students at school refuse to wear suits and are either suspended for their safety or simply cut out of school. This has led to 486 absences already in February. Walking through the hallways at Loudoun County is not ideal, according to many teachers at the school.
“There are dead and alive wasps, injured students, weapons swinging and stinging all over the place,” Nurse Long said.
Nurse Long has been trying to keep up with all the injuries, but now they aren’t just from wasps.
A week after the wasps were discovered a mouse was caught running through an English classroom on the second floor leaping onto books, desks, and even a student’s hair. Because of this, the students who have a class in that room refuse to return to the room. Staff are hoping this number doesn’t increase like wasps or else there may be no school for a long period.
The kids on the other hand are hoping for no school and are showing up outside the building with different signs, chants, and hurtful words trying to protest to shut down the school. This didn’t help the school’s sake because three days later another mouse showed up in room 188 making the students cower in the middle of Spanish class.
“First wasps, then mice, what’s next? snakes?” Freshman Lila Loud cried.
What is next is furry and stinky because later that week two skunks showed up on the football field. Students ran and staff cried, but that didn’t help one of the teachers, Harry Ice. Ice was gathering students out of the field, but he got the short end of the stick when one of the skunks scurried forward and sprayed him, drenching his clothes with a stink. Not only did students wear hazmat suits to schools, but those who have Ice may wear nose plugs because the stench isn’t gone yet, even after a two-hour tomato juice bath.
Parents keep texting Principal Yolanda Yello, but she doesn’t know what to do about the infestation. The wasp’s nests continue to multiply from six to thirteen and both wasps and students are dropping like flies.
At the end of March, the Loudoun County Board of Administrators decided to shut down the school for the rest of the year. Though kids are happy, many parents are still protesting to sue the school for the lack of safety and well-being for their children. Parents got what they wanted because, on March 22, Yello got stung four times when trying to clean out her office. These stings impacted her so much that she decided to retire. When Yello continued home that day she was cleaning out her boxes when suddenly a tiny gray mouse appeared next to her sticky notes.
“The mouse kept frantically running around the room with sticky notes stuck to it while I was just screaming,” Yello said. Some kids conspire saying there’s a curse at County or just pure bad luck.
