Critters in my Cheeseburger?

Every day, Patricia Zuniga, a member of the support staff at Pinewood, sees the same stunned look on the faces of students. The grimaces and mutters are constant when she helps serve the daily lunches in the kitchen. With lunch options often topping $8, she can’t help but notice the rate at which student account balances are decreasing. This prompted her to take action.

“I had to help the kids who deserve better, cheaper food,” Zuniga said. “I wrote an email to [Head of Upper Campus Gabriel] Lemmon and Epicurean detailing my proposal to make lunch options healthier and tastier at this school.”

Lemmon was full of praise for Zuniga’s idea.

“I’m going to be honest, the lunch here doesn’t taste like anything,” Lemmon said. “That’s why I always order a daily chalupa with McDonald’s fries.”

Lemmon also said that he’d been in contact with Epicurean, and both sides had decided to upgrade to a new menu.

“From now on, Pinewood will be serving an assortment of insects,” Lemmon said with excitement in his voice.

After those words, no one ate lunch for two weeks. Pinewood students took detours around the school kitchen to avoid contact with the fried bugs. Some of these deviations include students us - ing the turkey, a path around the school, to get to class. An unorthodox path is on the roof, where four stu dents have already been hospi talized due to their falls. However, af ter a couple stu

Bugs By the Numbers

dents al lowed their hun ger to get the best of them, they tried the new $5 Cricket Caviar. The stunningly flavorful experience prompted a schoolwide frenzy for the unique meals. A student favorite, the Fly Soufflé, sold out in just a couple minutes. When asked why this new menu was working so well, Zuniga was endless in her plaudits for the revolutionary idea.

“I was hoping this plan would work, and after a while, it did,” Zuniga said. “A quarter of the world’s population is already eating bugs, so I thought to myself: Why don’t we?”

It turns out that eating insects is simply better for the environment. Insect farms produce 96% fewer emissions than livestock farms. They also don’t need to be tended to nearly as much, and they reproduce at a rapid pace, meaning there is

2023 Olympic Games to Be Held at UC

When you think of the Olympics, you think of grand ceremonies, thrilling battles until the final buzzer, and competitive clashes between countries on the biggest stage on the globe. The mind-boggling madness of the Olympics comes to town this summer, hosted by a local school in Los Altos.

Pinewood School beat out Paris, Tokyo, Beijing, Sydney, London, Athens, Rome, and Berlin to be chosen as the next location for the global gauntlet of international athletics. The Best Operational Supreme Supervisor (BOSS) of the Pinewood Olympics will be Head of Upper Campus Gabriel Lemmon. Lemmon will lead the competition, overseeing all the various events ranging from basketball to surfing.

“What could go wrong?” Lemmon said.

Six grades of world class athletes have been training for months to represent their grade during the Pinewood Olympics. However, rivalries have sparked in recent weeks between grades, leading to fierce conflict on and off the field.

At the end of the last seventh grade versus eight grade qualifier soccer match two weeks ago, an all-out brawl followed a missed call. The fight resulted in eight red cards and 15 yellow cards being issued. Both groups were quick to blame each other for the conflict.

“I am aware of the high tensions between the grades,” Lemmon said, “but I think it’s funnier to let them fight it out.”

BOSS has a foolproof plan to transform Pinewood’s campus into a luxurious land of competition.

“We will be completely demolishing the Junior High Quad,” Lemmon said. “I’m talking explosives, wrecking balls, the whole thing.” Lemmon intends to conduct the wreckage and destruction during the most important week of the semester — finals week.

“I think the destruction will help our students focus on their Lemmon said. Lemmon adds that students will have to navigate around the massive cranes and demolition crews on campus during the duration of

Lemmon said that he intends to transform the wreckage into a luxurious Olympic Village for all athletes competing in the Pinewood Olympics.

According to super trustworth surveys by The Perennial staff who AREN’T terrible at stats

300,000 lbs of bugs cooked daily

99.9% of students reported satistifaction with the new Epicurian menu

Kim Hudson, in her Mad Scientist Era?

A fuzzy, greenish brown, bulbous organism is sending out warning signals via its noxious stench that wafts through the halls of Pinewood. In the name of science, biology teacher Kim Hudson is harboring what appears to be a secret virus in the back of her classroom. Fear, just like the virus, is bubbling and sprouting inside the students at Pinewood Upper Campus.

Hudson says the reason for breeding the virus is purely for educational purposes, but rumors have been floating around, and Hudson is unwilling to share too many details. It seems Hudson may have offered up Pinewood as a lab for the government to secretly work in to test this new virus, as after the COVID-19 pandemic, the government has been trying to gauge hu-

Freshman athlete Mailey Wang was elated at the opportunity to compete in her hometown. Wang will compete for the freshmen girls volleyball team throughout the course of the tournament.

“I can sleep in and still make it to my game on time,” Wang said. Wang added that she couldn’t wait to face the seniors in

“They get to go off campus for lunch, and I just don’t think that’s fair,” Wang said. “I am gonna take it out on them.” man response to viruses similar to that of COVID-19.

The cutthroat competition has just begun, with six grades battling it out over the course of a full month and vying for a championship on the greatest land the Olympics has ever seen.

“This is going to be a mess, but it’s definitely going to be funny to watch,” Lemmon said.

“I just. . . um, like science,” Hudson said. “I mean, yeah, it hasn’t really served a purpose in my lessons yet, but it’s all for educational purposes.”

It is currently unclear whether or not this experiment has been sanctioned as an educational tool by the Pinewood administration. Either way, students are growing extremely wary. The virus is not subtle with its loud stench cramping the biology room.

Senior Anna Grillo, a previously keen biology student, has stopped showing up to Hudson’s class.

“I just finished watching ‘The Last of Us,’ and that thing growing in the back of the room makes my skin crawl,” Grillo said.

Students are fearful that media and reality may become too reminiscent of each other as the hit HBO show, “The Last of Us,” is super popular among students these days. The show darkly portrays an apocalyptic world where a fungus has taken over and rots peoples’ minds and bodies. The worry is that Hudson’s virus has a similar agenda.

There is still much to know about the life brewing in the back of Room 19, but Hudson is a beloved teacher, and we are hopeful there is a great payoff for this great risk. Still, maybe it’s best to play it safe and avoid exposure to the microorganism as much as possible.