I used to live in a beautiful old Victorian home that had a parlor. I used it as a piano room and it is where I taught lessons. When my students arrived, they were to enter quietly and wait in a room called the family room, (my husband called it the holding pen) which was a bit of a distance from the piano room.

At that time I was teaching about 40 students a week and some of my students would hang out in the “holding pen” for upwards of an hour or so before their lesson or stay after their lesson until a parent could pick them up. Since the parlor was on the other side of the house from the “holding pen” and I could not see what was going on in that room while I was teaching a lesson. (I often wished I had a hidden camera!)

I had this prized plant that takes forever to grow called a burro’s tail or a donkey’s tail (Sedum morganianum) and I began to notice that every Tuesday after lessons, that plant would have a bunch of the little cylindrical leaves stripped from one of the long stems of the plant and there would be a pile of them on the floor. I asked all of my students about this strange phenomenon and of course no one had a clue what was happening to my plant! Sure enough, this went on for weeks until my prized plant had no leaves left and eventually died.

I never did find out what which student was responsible!