Salmon Spawning Made Simple

Here's the way it was with the second grade class at East Elementary School in Kodiak.

They were studying the life cycle of the salmon and they came to spawning. So in art class each kid made a salmon mask. (What a salmon mask should look like, God only knows.) They adjourned to the gym where each kid held his/her mask on with one hand. The girls were given a sponge Nerf ball and the boys a can of shaving cream. The male salmon chases the female salmon and sprays the egg. Thus, nature's cycle remains unbroken.

Some ofthe girls wouldn't run but meekly held out their egg. One aggressive girl chased her partner around the gym thrusting her egg at him. This so flustered the boy that he couldn't get his spray can to function. She called him a sissy and he burst into tears. One little boy kept spraying himself even after the teacher told him it was nasty. Two boys were content spraying each other and wouldn't pay attention to their female partners.

When the teacher turned her back many of the kids quickly spawned with other than their assigned partners.

Afterwards, the children were graded on their spawning techniques. Parents of those given low grades protested, saying spawning is too subjective to be graded.