Scott Kefgen's house is now home to three geckos, two turtles, a gerbil and a lobster named Larry.
There is no partridge in a pear tree, but there are a couple frogs and a fish tank with about 30 fish in it.
"The geckos are in the middle of my kitchen floor, my dining room table has the gerbil, and the frogs and the turtles are in this gigantic tank," saidKefgen, who teaches first grade at Harlan Elementary School in the Birmingham Public School District. "My house is pretty full of them."
Kefgen is one of many teachers across the state who havebecome a surrogate parent to classroom pets that had to be evacuated from schools in March because of the coronavirus shutdown.
In addition to the traditional hamsters and fish, teachers now are caring for things like chinchillas, rats, skinks, chicks, hissing co*ckroaches and, of course, snakes. Can't forget the snakes.
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"I went in to do the dishes and there was a frozen mouse thawing out in a cup of hot water in our kitchen," said Elizabeth Paddock, whosehusband, Jon, teaches ninth-grade biology at Clarkston Junior High School.
Did she freak out? Not really.
"Before I met my husband I would have, but we've been together for 20 years," she said. "Wecan't do anything outside without him touchingsome kind of snake or lizard or bug. Youjust get used to it."
In this case, the Paddock household had to welcome agarter snake named Striker;an albino corn snake, Rocky Balboa; and a 5-foot California king snake, Red. The turtle's name isLucky Strike, the blue-tongued skink goes by Pudge and Paddock has forgotten the name of the bearded dragon, but he thinks it was either Bob or Bill.
The animals, with the exception of the bearded dragon, have been in Paddock's classroom for years and former students still come by to see them when they visit the school.
Gov. Gretchen Whitmer announced the school closures late on a Thursday in March.
"I had to go out to school on that Friday, and I had to load up the family van with everything," Paddock said.
His classroom also had several baby chicks, and a colleague agreed to take those home, coop and all.
Paddock figured he'd be boarding the animals at home for a couple weeks or so. ThePaddocks have 10-year-old twin boys, who enjoyed turning a spare bedroom into a makeshift zoo for the new additions to the family.They also liked playing with the animals as they did their studies in that same room.
But when the state announced that schools would remain closed for the rest of the school year, it dawned on the family that this was going to be more work than they were planning.
"That's when I finally was able to put calls out to all my students and say, 'OK, it's time for people to volunteer to take animals,' " Paddock said.
The students responded and he arranged a contact-less drop off for five of the six animals. The Paddock family still has Red, the California King Snake, and they plan to keep him at home until school resumes.
Kitchen counter
Dominic Lis is a science teacher at Novi High School. When the school shutdown was announced, he brought home two axolotls, salamanders that live exclusively in water. The female is 11 inches long and the male is 8.
"They're found at the Detroit Zoo," Lis said. "They used to be found in the wild out in Mexico City, but due to the way that our climate has changed, they become either critically endangered or extinct. They haven't found one in the wild in quite some time."
Lis keeps them in a 35-gallon fish tank, which sitsat the far end of his kitchen on some empty counter space. Lis's wife, Bridget, wasn't immediately sold on the idea.
"At first, she was a little resistant to their location in the kitchen," Lis said. "But once I pitched the animal welfare card and talked about the temperature changes and where the survivable range is for them, she quickly was OKwith it and has adjusted to having them out here."
It helps that Bridget Lis is a zoologist who studied at Michigan State and plans to be ateacher herself, he said.
Even the family dog, a 4-year-old Siberian Husky, Tikaani, has made peace with them.
"When they first came home, she was really curious, and was trying to kind of peek up and see what was going on," Lis said. "But since the axolotlsdonot come out of their tankunless they're being transported, she hasn't had an opportunity to really interact with them."
Scott Doty teaches biology at Berkley High School. Hehas about 30 aquariums in his classroom holding about 300 fish. There was no way to move those, so he feeds them by slippinginto the building early in the morning when the custodians are there.
He also checks in on a bearded dragon, a ball python, a tarantula and a colony of Madagascar hissing co*ckroaches.
Rat basketball
One of the main features of Doty's classes are rats. Not the kind that roam sewers. Theseare more like oversize mice. Students raise them and train them to do things like put a ball in a basket. Doty calls that rat basketball. His various classes have about 120 rats and aspart of their coursework, the students take them home for short periods.
"We'll take themhome over the weekend just to help train them and such," Doty said. "Unfortunately, the rats went home about a week before this whole thing came down. They just went home and they never came back because of the whole pandemic thing."
Doty has been trying to help students care for the rats, dropping off food at their homes and most, but not all, students have been fine with it.
"Of late, they've been returning some rats that they are kind of done with at this point," Doty said.
Doty has a couple of rats at his house, but he returns them to the pet shop pretty quickly. He said he's accustomed to visiting school to care for the animals.
"It's just what I do. I've done it for a couple decades," he said. "It's nothing new. It is basically what I do in the summer except in the summer I don't have rats."
LindsayGonska teaches third grade at Ferndale Upper Elementary School. In early March, she had placed 12chicken eggs in an incubator.When the shutdown happened, she brought the whole setup home, where she's had to deal with the ups and the downs of caring for them.
"I got two of them to hatch, two more almost hatched, but they didn't make itand unfortunately, on day four, one of the babiesdied," she said. "It's pretty sad, you know, you want those babies."
Chicks tend to do best in small groups so Gonska didn't want the surviving chickto be alone. She and her husband went out and bought three more.
"It's a little nerve-racking, but it's fun, too, because I take the chicks outside and put them in the grass," she said.
She also has 10 fish, a frog and four Madagascar Hissing co*ckroaches.
"They're big and they hiss," she said of the co*ckroaches. "They're harmless. They don't bite. They just eat lettuce, spinach, sometimes fruit and a cup of water."
Zoom calls
Amy Keel teaches preschool at the CenterlineEarly Childhood Center. Her classroom includes Hudson, a hamster that the children play with. He has been staying with Keel's colleague, Tina Girimonte,but he's never far out of mind.
"She always brings him to our Google meet session, so the kids get to see him and say hi," Keel said.
Erica Peruski teaches fourth grade at Webber Elementary School in the Lake Orion Community School District. She's caring for Miles, a box turtle.
"We've had him a couple other times," she said. "We were going to take him for spring break and it just kind of turned into an extended stay."
Peruski said the turtle isn't much trouble and her kids enjoy having him around. On warm days, they let him roam the yard and they sometimes attach a piece of orange tape to his shell so he's easier to find in the grass.
"A lot of my grocery shopping has revolved around him, which has helped us eat healthier," she said. "He eats mostly fruits and vegetables and he also eats cooked meat.He also loves earthworms. When he's outside he can pull them out of the ground and it's a real treat."
Some heartbreaks
Not every attempt to relocate animals has been as fortunate. Kefgen and others at the school were awarded a grant from the Michigan Department of Natural Resources to raise salmon in their school. The fish lived in a 75-gallon aquarium in the school's lobby and the plan was to grow them large enough to be released into the wild on Mother's Day weekend.
But when the shutdown happened, those plans had to change because caring for them in the school wasn't going to be possible. The fish had to be released in mid-March into cold water that reduces their chance to survive, Kefgen said. The DNR told school officials it was the most humane thing to do under the circ*mstances.
"In terms of classroom pets,that was, I think, the most heartbreaking," Kefgen said. "We had todo an emergency salmon releasewithout the kids. We had planned a very large event, we were going to do it on a weekend. We were planning on inviting the whole school and we were going to have multiple activities, all based on Michigan ecology and Michigan invasive species."
Kefgen said he doesn't regret the effort he has put into the animals, even paying for their food with his own money. Students often give him gift cards to pet stores so he can buy supplies. But he loves animals and said they help kids learn.
"I think they learn a lot about empathy because theyactually help take care of them;they're not just there to look at," he said. "I have always been of the mindset that if you have these classroom animals they should be there for a purpose."
Most teachers have tried to keep their sense of humor about them as they expand their families.
"On March 13, I got an indefinite case of the crabs," said Sheri Dudzinski, who teaches at Marie C. Graham Elementary School in L'Anse Creuse School District."I have sevenhermit crabs that came home with me and are here until we go back to school. Two goldfish came home, too, but they aren't that funny."
Contact John Wisely: 313-222-6825 or jwisely@freepress.com. On Twitter @jwisely
