Culprits in pigeon release caught
New Prague High School Principal Lonnie Seifert said that the students who were responsible for releasing pigeons and a rooster into the school last week have been identified.
“All the individuals have been identified and the school is looking as to what the full consequences will be,” he told The New Prague Times Monday.
The pigeons were released sometime between midnight Thursday and 6 a.m. Friday. The pigeons had roosted in a skylight area above a stairwell between the locker bank and commons area, where students eat lunch, leaving droppings throughout the area. The incident led to classes being called off for the day. Instead, students and staff had a “Digital Learning Day,” with students responsible for completing online assignments from their teachers.
Seifert did not identify the students or their grade in school, but emphasized that this was not a “senior prank.”
“It was not our senior class that did this,” Seifert said. “We don’t want them tagged with this.
He added that the four students most likely did not understand the full consequences of their actions when they released the birds into the building. Professionals had to be brought in to capture the pigeons and a cleaning crew had to sanitize the building in order for it to be used for a scheduled dance recital Friday night. There were other added costs to the district and loss of wages for some hourly employees.
A news release from the district said that all the pigeons were captured over the weekend, and were released.
“As a school, we are hoping that this will be a learning situation for all of our students that future pranks will not be tolerated and that there are serious consequences,” the district said in a release.
Read more in the May 25, 2017, print edition of The New Prague Times.