Students get no egg-u-cation after high-school chicken prank

"We don't need no egg-u-cation!"

Could that have been the battle cry of the 85 Rhode Island Red hens as they were crated off from Northeast High School on Monday?

Did a hyper-motivated hen proclaim she was not just "another chick in the wall?"

At Northeast High yesterday, students and some staff were yolking it up with the wise cracks, students said.

It was one day after the hens were found running amok in the school, at Cottman and Algon avenues, in what is believed a senior-class prank.

The school was shut down Monday and scrubbed clean. Classes resumed yesterday.

The cleanup cost $5,000, school-district spokesman Fernando Gallard said yesterday.

One school employee yesterday recalled arriving at the school Monday when there was still a major mess in the hallways.

There had been hens and chicken feed found from the basement to the first and second floors.

"Honey, I was stepping in poop," said the worker, who declined to have her name printed.

And, she said, she had "heard there were eggs down in the cafeteria."

The hens were fairly large, too. She said people were talking about a rumor that a couple of the chickens had tried to peck at a school aide's legs.

"They were almost up to her knees," the worker said.

But Gallard said that no school employees were hurt by any pecking hens.

There's still no word on where the chickens came from or who pulled off the prank.

Police, who are still investigating, released a surveillance videotape showing four people dressed in black hoodies near the school's front entrance at 9:30 p.m. Sunday.

A police officer said they were speculating the intruders attended a community-league basketball game at the school Saturday or Sunday night and hid inside after the game had ended.

One Northeast High employee said that the doors to the gym are often open Saturdays and Sundays for the community games overseen by the city Recreation Department.

Meanwhile, over at Swenson Arts and Technology High School, Principal David Kipphut said that the captured hens are doing just fine inside their quarantined horse-trailer at Fox Chase Farm, a demonstration farm managed by the Swenson school.

"They're warm and being fed and they're still continuing to lay eggs," Kipphut said. He and an official from the State Department of Agriculture said that inspectors will visit the farm to examine the hens before they can be housed permanently with the other chickens at the farm.

Kipphut said that the farm can't keep all of the hens and some will probably go to Saul Agricultural High School, after being given a clean bill of health - and if no one claims them as the rightful owner. He also said people called and offered to adopt some of the hens.

The Swenson students were also having fun about the chicken news he said. "Each morning, just before the announcements, sometimes they play a song," Kipphut said. "Today they played The Chicken Dance." *