Nature Club update by E Truss (Senior Prefect) as imagined by Jonathan Wallace

St Margaret’s School  (school motto Fides in mercato)

Nature Club

By E Truss (Senior Prefect)

 

 

 

 

Gosh! Hello everyone!  What an exciting week or so it has been!  We are all feeling a little bit dazed after everything that has happened since the decision was taken to take the school out of the Headmasters’ Conference.  We’re all very sorry that Mr Cameron has decided he can’t be Head anymore but we have to look forward now to who will take over.  I suppose that Nature Club should be backing either Mr Crab or Mr Fox to be the next head but we mustn’t be frivolous!!!

Immigration is of course one of the big issues of the moment and I am pleased to announce that Nature Club will be adopting an ‘Australian Points-based System’ with regards to the birds we allow into the school grounds.  Under this scheme we shall, of course, recognise the crucial contribution made to school finances by the pheasants and Mr Snares will continue to breed large numbers of them for release into the grounds.  However, Mr Snares – who is a true countryman and therefore understands these things – has explained that some birds must be kept under control so as to maintain ‘the natural balance’.  Some rather hot-headed members of the Birds Section of the Club have produced a lot of graphs and charts and so on to try and show that there should be more hawks in our woods and to blame Mr Snares for the shortfall but he has told me that if we allow these terrible predators to increase there would soon be no wildlife left at all and he should know!  Obviously as the head of Nature Club I am very worried indeed about such a possibility and what we should do about it but Mr Snares has kindly told me not to worry as he will take care of it.

Whilst I am confident that Mr Snares will be able to look after this problem perfectly well if we just leave him to it, we did agree that we should have an Official Plan for achieving the right number of hawks in the wood.  This has been agreed and I can outline some of the key points.  One of the main ‘pillars’ is what we are referring to as ‘Diversionary Tactics’ and I am pleased to confirm that Sir Ian Bash’em, the former star of the school cricket team, has offered to put his name to a number of lurid articles explaining why it is the Bird Section of Nature Club that is really to blame for everything. The rest of the plan is basically up to Mr Snares.

In our last newsletter I told you about our exciting plans to grow some crops in the school grounds with the aim of contributing to school finances. Well, I have to tell you that we have been frustrated that silly rules under the HM Conference stopped us from using certain products to protect the crops from pests.  Mr Farrago, who did so much to get us out of the HM Conference, has said that barmy red tape like that was exactly the kind of thing he objected to and that, as far as he is concerned, anything with ‘nicotine’ in it has got to be good.  Mr Monsanto from the Chemistry Department is ready to produce whatever we need and we hope to be able to give him ‘full speed ahead’ very soon. I know that young Shardlow will whinge about this but he needs to understand that most of us don’t really care for all those horrid creepy-crawlies!

Finally, I should like to draw your attention to a very important issue raised by Coghill, our school Captain of Game.  He has suggested that some members of Nature Club have got their priorities rather mixed up and have been ignoring the most important problem for wildlife.  He is referring to the practice of many of the pupils to refer to the tapioca pudding served by the dinner ladies as ‘frogspawn’.  He is very concerned that this could encourage some of the ‘new bugs’ to go and help themselves to buckets-full of actual frog spawn from the school pond (before we build over it, obviously) which would be a disaster for the frog population and probably also make the new bugs very sick.  Can we please, therefore, all desist from using this rather childish name?

Happy nature spotting!!!!

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