Taking classroom pets home for the weekend was a kindergarten ritual 40 years ago, along with the scurrying to find the bunny corpse behind the couch and returning it to class Monday morning.

It’s not dead. It’s sleeping. Tuckered out.

Jerry Curtsinger of Louisville, Kentucky, thought it would be a good idea if his kids could bring home the green anoles, a type of small, green lizard, that are apparently science class favorites.

Curtsinger said the problems began two weeks after his kids took home two lizards from school.

"Caden, our youngest, he got sick, and he had a fever of between 101 and 102.”

In the weeks that followed, Curtsinger and his two other children also became violently ill. And he said the doctor's diagnosis was salmonella.

Curtsinger learned about three out of four lizards carry salmonella. So he brought his concerns to the Jefferson County Public School District.

Lee Ann Nickerson, a science specialist with JCPS, said JCPS has a standard letter that is sent to all parents when their children want to adopt any kind of class pet, which outline the guidelines of each adoption and give some caretaking tips. After the Curtsinger family's salmonella episode, a new warning was inserted into that letter in bold italics.

Those classroom pets are now on double secret probation.

Nickerson said JCPS has been using lizards to demonstrate habitats in science class for several years, and this is the first time anyone has contracted salmonella from them. She also noted that other common pets, such as dogs, can also carry salmonella. Like lizards, they're perfectly safe as long as you practice proper handwashing when you handle them.

I’m sure that’s tremendously comforting to the Curtsinger’s of Kentucky.

My favorite John Cleese movie is not one of the Monty Python things, or a Fish Called Wanda, or the Faulty Towers TV bits. It is the rarely seen and vastly underappreciated 1986 effort, Clockwise. It is so … British.

“Brian Stimpson (John Cleese) is the headmaster of a comprehensive (high) school in England. He sets himself, his staff and pupils very high standards. On the way to a conference at which he is to talk, all manner of disasters strike."

Brian Stimpson came to mind after This is Croydon Today reported that Cumnor House School, in Pampisford Road, South Croydon, has been hit by an outbreak of campylobacter.

Headteacher Peter Clare-Hunt, who I am totally envisioning as John Cleese, insists there is no proof that the bug came from the school kitchen.

"We have had five confirmed cases of campylobacter which is a type of food poisoning.

“The recommendation that the environmental health and independent food hygiene consultant made are all very minor and by minor I mean temperatures of fridges. But there is nothing sinister.

"We're talking about food storage, temperatures of fridges not being too high or too low, making sure we don't prepare raw meat alongside salads.”

Yes, John-Cleese-in-Clockwise character: don’t prepare raw meat alongside salads.

Headteacher Peter Clare-Hunt also said,

"In terms of tracing this back to the kitchen that will never be proved one way or the other."

How reassuring.
 

Police said three high school students in Hartford, Wis., should face felony juvenile charges for tricking others into drinking beverages containing urine.

Hartford Union Coach Ben Hoffmann informed authorities of an incident Nov. 28 in which a 16-year-old student tricked a basketball teammate into consuming a drink containing urine.

In a similar incident last month, two other male students put urine into soda and later sent out e-mail messages detailing who drank the contaminated beverages.

You can pee on the ice, but not in an ice machine.

Four juveniles are facing several charges after security cameras showed them urinating into a cafeteria ice machine at a Chapel Hill,North Carolina middle school.

The News & Observer of Raleigh reported Tuesday the boys range in age from 12 to 15, and are charged with breaking and entering, larceny and vandalism to a public building. Because they are under 16, their names are being withheld.

Police said the vandalism occurred Dec. 15 at Smith Middle School in Chapel Hill. School officials said the ice machine was used on the following three days.

But all the machine's ice and containers were removed when school officials learned of the incident.

Public health officials instructed the school staff on how to clean and disinfect the surfaces and equipment before using them again.