Kaleb Cervantes

Stacy Thomson and Cory Urban pose with new pet of the front office, Clark the betta fish.

On Dec. 2, Stacy Thomson, Secretary at Manitou Springs High School, and the front office staff adopted a betta fish named Clark after a prank on Social Studies teacher Lawrence Housely. 

  Housely started this prank war about a month ago between himself and Thomson over the office snacks. After a student was sent by Housely to grab him a snack from the front office, only to have granola bars. 

“So one day, I bought 25 bags of chips for the front office and I covered them with little sticky notes that said things like ‘Quakers a psychopath,’ ‘Granola sucks,’ ‘It’s full of sugar,’ ‘You hate children.’ I filled her office with them,” said Housely. “Some teachers and students wrote really detailed emails while some were to the point. So she got like, 80 to 100 different emails.”

Thomson then went to her husband’s work holiday party, and won the fish in a game of White Elephant. 

“She pranked Mr. Housley with it,” said office aid Hailey Troxell (12). “After finding it in his room, we realized that Mr. Housley does not know how to take care of a fish; so it was given back to miss Thomson as a new pet.”

There was a friendly debate over what the fish should be named, a popular nickname used by the office was “Little Stace”, while Housely had his own name in mind, “Evil Devil Stacy Fish,” said Housely.

After the fish was given back, Thomson named it Clark, though the front office has many different names for it. 

“I think its current name Clark is perfect. I know there’s a few names floating around, but I think Clark is a good name for it,” Troxell said.

Thomson feels that Clark has brought the office together. 

“It’s just kind of another cool addition to the office and something that just brings people, people like the weirdest stuff,” Thomson said. “They’ll come down and meet it or just check to see at least doing so. But we love it. We need it in the office.”