Things got “nutty” at U-High when squirrels were spotted scurrying through classrooms and hallways on Sept. 20-21. 

On Sept. 20, a squirrel was spotted near the third floor stairwell but promptly ran away. A furry forager got even bolder Sept. 21 as it found its way into a science classroom. It is not known whether this is the same squirrel.

The squirrel went inside biology teacher Elizabeth Hubin’s classroom.

“When I got to school yesterday morning, Dr. Hund informed me there was a squirrel in my classroom,” Dr. Hubin said. “He had been walking down the hall and it scurried in the only open door, which was my classroom.” 

Principal Paul Beekmeyer, Dean of Students Ana Campos, Assistant Principal Zilkia Rivera-Vazquez, and science teachers Daniel Calleri and Daniel Bobo-Jones all went to the classroom to attempt to remove it.

Dr. Calleri said, “So what I did was, you know, open the windows and then we tried for a little while to get the squirrel to go out the windows… [it] leapt off the counter far away from the windows and it went down the space between the lab stations and then it shot out [the window].”

Dr. Calleri noted he had previous experience chasing squirrels out of the school. According to Dr. Calleri, he finds it hard to tell whether this was the only squirrel or there were multiple. 

Students waited out of their AT Biology class while faculty got rid of the squirrel. 

Lauren Tapper was a student in first period AT Biology.

“It was our biology classroom, first period of the day, and we all went to go into the classroom and the door was locked,” Lauren said. “We saw that there was a squirrel in the classroom. It was just running around the classroom.” 

There is still uncertainty regarding how the squirrel entered the school.

“The assumption is that somebody is leaving the window open, or it’s sneaking in with literally the most unobservant class of toddlers on Earth,” Dr. Calleri said.