School's pet bat tests positive for rabies

Catching a bat in a school basement and keeping it as a classroom pet is a great way to learn — about rabies.

Two staff members at Trinity Lutheran School are getting a weekslong series of rabies shots after a bat kept in a locked terrarium tested positive for the disease.

On May 9, seventh- and eighth-grade teacher Steve Coniglio used a stick and a bucket to capture the bat, which died two days later.

The bat had been displayed in classrooms and students gave it crickets, but Susan Tucker, head teacher at the central Wyoming school, said Coniglio made sure students did not handle the animal.

State and county health officials on Tuesday interviewed all 95 staff members and students at the school and decided that Coniglio and a teaching assistant who cleaned the cage after the bat died needed to be treated as a precaution, said Marty Stensaas, manager for Fremont County Public Health Nursing...

--USA Today

Sea lion joins California schoolchildren's walk-a-thon

He has flippers instead of feet — and certainly no sneakers or hiking boots. But that didn't stop a sea lion from joining schoolchildren on a walk-a-thon.

The marine mammal apparently noticed children doing laps Friday morning around a course they had set up at the Marin Country Day School next to the shores of the San Francisco Bay. The 185-pound Steller sea lion waddled ashore, shocking students and teachers.

"He did a whole lap," said Kelly Watson, director of constituent relations and web communications at the private school.

It was the latest brush with humans for the 1-year-old sea lion, called Astro by staffers at the Marin Headlands-based Marine Mammal Center.

Astro's mother abandoned him at Ano Nuevo Island off the San Mateo coast in June, prompting biologists to bottle-feed the pup. They released the adolescent on April 25 with a radio tag...

--USA Today

Missing Big Boy statue found on top of high school

Students arriving at Gahanna Lincoln High School on Monday morning were greeted by a 7-foot statue of a rosy-cheeked lad that was pilfered from a Frisch's Big Boy restaurant.

The 200-pound fiberglass figure of the chubby boy in red and white suspenders was reporting missing Saturday morning from its concrete base, only to turn up on the roof of the school in the Columbus suburb, police said.

Officers believe it may have been a prank by seniors, Gahanna police Lt. Jeffrey Spence said. No arrests had been made.

A school maintenance crew removed the statue with a forklift and returned it to the restaurant, Spence said. The statue, valued at $7,000, was not damaged...

--USA Today