Dead chicken

J.W. Beatty, Ablain-St. Nazaire, 1918, oil on canvas, CN 8102, Canadian War Museum

At work I read a biography by Dorothy Hoover on J.W. Beatty (1869-1941), a Canadian painter who excelled in the genre of landscape. Here is a shocking excerpt I came across: "At the age of thirteen he was expelled for putting a dead chicken on the teacher's desk."

Getting expelled for putting food on your teacher's desk is just ridiculous. I mean, imagine it's Good Friday and all you really want is to give your teacher a dead fish, but you can't--you'd get expelled.