Student describes humiliation of moose poop incident
Principal involved now on leave, won't return to school in fall
CBC News
Posted: Jun 22, 2012 11:52 AM CT
Last Updated: Jun 22, 2012 6:45 PM CT
Three school staff members have been disciplined for not stepping in to stop two children from eating moose droppings offered to them as a prank. (infonavigate.com)A student who was duped into eating moose droppings says she was humiliated by the prank.
"I put it in my mouth and I took a bite out of it. And then everyone laughed," Brook, 14, said Friday. "Everyone laughed at me and made fun of me. So I went up to my tent and started crying."
CBC News agreed not to report the girl's surname.
She was one of two Grade 8 teens who were the victims of the prank during a school canoe trip.
Principal Bob Kovachik, a teacher and a resource officer at Walter Whyte School in Grand Marais, Man., watched as an adult chaperone passed off the moose droppings as chocolate-covered almonds during the school-organized trip on May 25.
Brook said that when the joke was revealed, the adult went to her to apologize.
"The guy came up to my tent and said 'Sorry' and that he shouldn't have and that he didn't know it would hurt me that way," Brook said.
She said a school staff member also spoke to her.
"She … said it would help me because it was nutritious," Brook recalled. The staff member also told her that moose only eat grass.
She tried to rinse her mouth, she said, but it was not easy because she wears braces.
"'I went down to the water to brush my teeth with the lake water," she said. "It got stuck in [the braces]."
Brook said she has not returned to the school since the incident.
"I didn't trust anyone," she said. "I couldn't talk to anyone. I thought I was going to get teased. And I still got teased through text messages."
The principal is now on leave and parents were told he will not be returning to the school.
Brook said she agrees with that move.
"After something like that. After something so unacceptable, he should be gone," she said. "He deserves it."
According to Karen Eyolfson, whose 13-year-old son was the other student fooled into eating the droppings, the parent chaperone offered the so-called almonds from a sandwich baggie.
When her son ran off to wash out his mouth, his classmate Brook, who didn't witness the first incident, was also tricked by the same adults into eating the droppings.
The staff members were all disciplined in some way for not intervening.
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