BIG Bird is in town, but I am sure that he’s not the man responsible for the big mess as you can see in these photos.

After all, Education Minister, Hazel Manning would not stand for any of that kind of crap, if you know what I mean.

Surely, the lady who thinks that Sesame Street is the answer to the generations of youth delinquency that we now face, would want a clean and healthy environment for the children, at least.

Worse yet with the threat of Bird Flu in the air!

So, angry parents -- including me -- of students attending the Sacred heart Girls’ R.C. School want to know whether the ministry has a policy of non interference with birds, given Mrs. Manning’s relationship with Big Bird.

Bird droppings on the wall and floor.

Big mess along the hand rail.

These photos, which I sneaked one afternoon last week when I went to pick up my daughter after school can blow the “nice, cute cuddly” Sesame Street cover to smithereens.

I’m sure Mrs. Manning would hate our visiting performers to know that our young girls are living in birds*it, after they leave home dressed quite neatly and nicely in the morning.

Even though it’s in black and white you can see quite clearly the load that gathers overnight, after the cleaners do their job, to greet the children when they reach to school in the morning.

They walk up the stairs to their classrooms, passing the smelly stuff and it is enough to want to bring up your breakfast.

Because of the pigeons that roost and live on the beams above the stairs, any child or teacher using the stairs is likely to get caught in the crossfire, with a drop or two likely to fall on their head.

In this rounds, however, birds**it is not good luck.

It’s a straight case of Bird Flu.

Especially because the pigeons are wild birds which makes them more vulnerable to the Bird Flu virus.

The other photo shows the stuff on the hand rails and on the walls that were nicely painted during the August vacation.

Now, it’s not a simple case of the cleaners having to remove the stuff ever so often.

Or that they were delinquent.

I happened to catch the photos before the daily clean-up.

And another angry parent told me that, as usual, the folks at Sacred Heart Girls’ have been calling the Ministry of Education to help bring some redress, as promised by one man.

He’s been putting them off, everytime they call.

See, the ministry has not been all that bad.

After all, in their repair programme over the long vacation, they closed up some beams where the pigeons used to roost.

But that has only changed the scope of the problem.

The pigeons refuse to leave.

It has reached the stage now where the school has had to condemn the use of one classroom because the pigeons live above the walls, very close to the windows.

So the children don’t have to be walking up the stairs to end up in a sticky situation.

They could even get pigeon poo in their copy books, if it comes to that.

So imagine we repatriated a container load of bleached feathers because we fear the Bird Flu, but a school full of children are now at risk because some dunderhead at the Ministry of Education refuses to follow up on the complaints.

And it’s not just Bird Flu; children are exposed to all kinds of diseases.

Now, Mrs. Manning should know that the last time there was a problem with sloppy security at the school, parents took time off from work to stage a loud and noisy protest in front of her ministry.

So she’s well advised to look into this situation before we form a band and come calling at her office, unexpectedly.