By Natalie Parker:
Dear Students,
I hope this letter finds you well in these troubling times. This is a time of uncertainty, as the world slowly heals after the events of the past year. We are working hard to bring everyone back in-person full-time after the major re-emergence of the crisis, but due to the global situation and our community’s high rate of hospitalization, doing so would be unsafe. We recommend that everyone stay at home for their own safety, unless leaving is absolutely essential. Please heed our recommendations.
After all, nobody is truly safe from the Laser Raccoons.
At the moment, the level of suffering is highest in more concentrated areas, where the trash cans that initially attract the beasts are more likely to be overflowing. Apartment complexes—which are often densely populated and have large, easily accessible dumpsters—are particular targets of this menace.
As a result of this infestation, a simple walk outside can become a minefield of risk to navigate. In light of this fact, the administration has compiled a few guidelines set forth by the Center for the Control of Scientifically Improbable But Incredibly Dangerous Pests (CCSIBIDP). Here are the most important things to keep in mind, all quoted from and easily findable on the CCSIBIDP website:
With their motion-activated thermal vision, the Laser Raccoons can locate you quickly and easily. However, you may be protected if you give yourself mild hypothermia and/or alter your face so that your frigid RBF will conceal your body heat.
Do not leave your trash cans (or rubbish bins, if you’re either British or an asshole, or both) unattended and overfilling. If you must, take your garbage to your closest landfill yourself. At the same time, it is dangerous to venture outside and attend to it, because a person near a trash can is an easy and obvious target. Additionally, do not allow your home to become filled with trash because the Laser Raccoons may then attempt to break in. You risk death in all of these scenarios, so potentially the safest option is to join your crazy environmentally conscious cousin and go waste-free. Pick your poison.
If you must go outside, do it with a friend that you can offer up as a sacrificial victim to appease one or more angry deities.
When you encounter a Laser Raccoon, do not attempt to shoot it. Bullets are useless against its hide, which is made of a rare substance that is not only bulletproof, but is also able to absorb anything that hits it and re-fire it into your gluteus maximus.
When ordering food, do your best to choose a meal that is light. This way, your delivery person will have an easier time holding it as they sprint from their car to your door in a desperate attempt to outrun any nearby Laser Raccoons. To ensure the best possible chance of the survival of your food, also try to pick something that will stay mostly intact after being tossed several yards onto your doorstep by an anxious delivery person.
Most important of all, stay indoors unless otherwise necessary. Do not gather in large groups, which are sure to catch the attention of the aforementioned motion-activated thermal vision of the Raccoons. Please, for the health of you and those around you, stay at home.
The full list of guidelines is easily accessible on the website, provided that you aren’t trying to witness it during the seven hours a day it spends being crashed or during the additional four hours it fails to load due to heat exhaustion.
In hopes of containing this national threat, all schools in the district will return to entirely virtual learning for the next two weeks. Following that, we will return to a hybrid learning model, but we will make sure to reorganize your cohorts so that everyone gets a turn to have a period of time when they are completely prevented from seeing their friends during the school day. Your teachers will administer open-book tests in the meantime. We strongly encourage you to not Google Quizlets to find the answers, as the integrity of your education should be of utmost importance to you and your teachers are really working hard for you ungrateful brats.
We wish to end this letter on a hopeful note. Someday, the Laser Raccoons will die out. True, there are some new variations (i.e. the Radioactive strain, the Shark-Teeth-Studded strain, and the Obsessed With Britney Spears strain), but with the creation of new trash disposal technologies that are proven to be effective against the majority of Laser Raccoons, along with newly developed types of laser-proof armor and shields, all of which are being gradually released to the public, there is light at the end of the tunnel. Keep fighting, everyone. Someday, we will all get to tell our incredulous grandchildren about the year we spent grappling with a pandemic of Laser Raccoons.
Regards,
The Local School District