Last time on Maxim’s Madness we discussed my displeasure with how my students treated bugs. Throwing them like toys, ripping off their legs and presenting them to me as presents; great habits to allow a child to develop. Well, it doesn’t stop there. Despite the knowledge that these kids are sadistic, their teachers allow them to keep scores of pets, and task them to take care of them. We all had some sort of class pet growing up, sure, but I think these kids have you beat. Why you ask? It’s all solved by a little count.

Currently we have:
Two rabbits
A rooster
Not one, Not two, not three, not four, but FIVE turtles
A praying mantis

Can you believe it? What kind of crazy fucked in the head teacher would allow a group of kids so many pets? It blows my mind. Now you’re probably thinking, well, they can’t be that bad…at least they’re alive, right? Wrong. I present to you my evidence.

Turtles be fucked

First the turtles. Our kids always have at least one turtle. There are turtles appearing and disappearing and reappearing all the time. On one faithful day a couple of months ago, the kids found a very large turtle next to a river that runs next to us. Of course, the kids wanted to keep it as a pet, and from some inspiration from hell, the teachers agreed. Now this was a big fucking turtle. I mean, on par with some of the biggest turtles I had ever seen. I mean I’ve seen bigger in like an aquarium or something, but this is the wild! Those aquarium turtles don’t actually exist. Anyway, so imagine your laptop that was a turtle… maybe a little bit taller…thicker… that’s the turtle. It was a BIG turtle! So the teachers agreed to keep the it…only problem? Where the fuck they gonna keep a big fucking huge turtle? The usual place we keep turtles is a slightly larger than average bucket (no joke). So the teachers decided to put the big ass turtle in the bucket the size of the turtle. The kids loved it. Seeing the the turtle struggle to get out. Never being able to. Awesome. Kids laughter. Precious. Big turtle. Fun. Oh yeah, innocence. That turtle died in two weeks. They liked it enough to dig it a grave at least… what the fuck.

It’s not like they treat their normal sized turtles any better. Yeah, instead of one big turtle taking up all the room in the bucket, they put five in there. No rocks to lay on, nothing. The kids job is to change the water everyday and feed them, but in the process they have to remove the turtles from their bucket. So in the meantime they run around with the turtles like they are superturtles. Also when they finally put them back in their bucket they set aside a couple of minutes to shake up their water bucket to help the with turtle earthquake training (I guess?). Again, these aren’t the same kids day in and day out. Different kids have to clean the bucket each week. This is a be mean to animals epidemic. I need to kick the kids heads in one of these days.

Praying mantis death tribunal

Here’s a shorter, yet more direct story about our praying mantis. I have less experience with the torture these kids gave this poor guy, though I do know two important facts. First, the fairly large praying mantis is being kept in an old pencil case. Most people wold stop here and be like, “okay, that’s sad”, but it doesn’t stop. It actually gets worse. Second, the teacher had a meeting with the class to tell them that the school had run out of food for the mantis, and at this rate it probably die from starvation if nothing was done. Being the classes pet, she asked for some of the kids opinions, so they could have a vote on what to do. Here were the three main sides:

1. “I don’t care, I want it”
2. “Put another one in so it can die with a friend”
And the minority opinion 3. “We should let it go”

In the end, the class was unable to come to a consensus and the bug stayed where it was.

Okay….JESUS MOTHERFUCKING CHRIST! Am I some sort of liberal animal loving freak? Am I weird? Tell me! Is the whole world mad?!?!

I’m glad I vented all of that out. Sorry it took two whole posts to do it!