You’ve seen them. They crawl about, slipping into any and all crevices. 

An instrument case? They can work with that. A high-tech keyboard? Easy enough for them. A dress stored in the Little Theatre? If you shake it out, you’ll find at least one of them snuggled between its creases. You can even find them in the hit video game Minecraft. 

Nothing is completely out of their reach.

These critters are, of course, Helena High’s resident vermin: silverfish.

According to Wikipedia, silverfish are “a species of small, primitive, wingless insect.” Their name derives from their silver color, as well as the “fish-like appearance of its movements.”

What the site fails to mention is that our very own Helena High School seems to be a hotspot for these things. Like, seriously, there’re so many of them here that I think we deserve at least a mention. Check any remotely humid spot in the school, like a bathroom or the gym, and without fail you’ll find a couple of them congregating. 

What do you think they talk about? The housing crisis? Wealth inequality? Stocks?

Probably wealth inequality, if we had to pick just one.

Their size-wealth ratio isn’t great; so, it’s understandable why they’d be conscious of the wider issue.

Nugget Editor Will Eaton conducted an online survey, gathering comments from HHS students and staff, recounting memories, and stories (traumatic or not) involving silverfish in our school. These are their unedited replies: 

Senior Caili Lowney said, “I’ve found them in my violin case and they come out of the giant hole in the ceiling in the orchestra room, they’re also all over the bathroom floor and it is real bad and sometimes I see them in the wild of the hall, people say they come out when people leave but me personally I see them everywhere.”

Sophomore Grey Gildroy wrote, “I left my lunchbox on the ground in the orchestra room last year, and when I came back to it there were silverfish hanging out in MY food!”

Science teacher Mrs. O’Malley replied with, “When I step on a silverfish, I make a wish! But my many wishes for a new high school have yet to come true 🙁 ” 

Junior Angie Eads commented, “So first I saw a silverfish in the art display case by the theater chilling in the soap sculpture of a bathtub second I was taking my tech theater summer final freshman year saw a silverfish right by where I was sitting and tried to stomp it instead it crawled up my leg and I tried so hard not to scream to not disrupt the test.”

Marketing teacher Mr. Askin wrote, “I once had a student who had her backpack filled with silverfish in her locker and she was freaking out. I took her backpack outside and emptied it and turned it inside out and shook all of the silverfish out of it. I have often said that HHS should adopt the mascot to be HHS Home Of the Fighting Silverfish.”

Junior Reese D said, “When I was a freshman I was sitting on the floor in the hallway with my friends when we were eating lunch and a bunch of silverfish were crawling on the floor and these flying ant looking things were falling on us. We didn’t eat in that hallway after that.”

Senior Alexander Frank commented, “I was going to the bathroom and I saw one go past my feet and I lifted my feet up and screamed!”

Senior and Nugget writer Thomas Black wrote, “I was spiraling outside of Mr. Schommer’s room a few days ago, balled up between his door and Ms. Montgomery’s, when a silverfish just sorta scuttled by. I didn’t think much of it at first, but it quickly caught my attention as it started running around in messy circles around a big breadcrumb. It was like it was celebrating! It was silly, but it helped pull me out of my spiral for at least a little bit, so I can’t complain too much.”

Long-time art teacher Mr. Scanlon opined, “I don’t mind the Silver Fish at all. After 28 years here I’ve become fond of the little guys. They’ll visit me on my table as I type at the computer. I just usually blow at them and they go their way. I try never to step on them as they scurry to their meetings. I rescue them from the sink so they don’t get washed away. I did have a chat with one of them late one night after Driver Dread. They’re pretty pissed about the new carpet in the Art Wing. Apparently their claws get snagged in the carpet and they can’t scurry fast enough? I don’t know. That’s what he said anyway. So ya, we coexist wonderfully. Too bad the rest of the world doesn’t.”

Senior Maddison Weisgerber said, “A couple tried to get me during Driver’s Ed classes on multiple occasions. I even found one in a cup in someone’s locker once! Main reason I don’t have a locker still; don’t want silverfish getting into my stuff.”

Senior Jude Connor had similar silverfish encounters: “I met one named Gram. I was waiting for a friend of mine to get out of Driver’s Ed, just sitting on the floor, and I found him. I didn’t know what a silverfish was at that point, and we hung out for, like, an hour? And then I lost him.” 

Rest easy Gram. You will be remembered fondly. 

Don’t worry too much if you missed out on meeting the little guy, though. 

He’ll be back.

Special Ed teacher Mr. Oppedahl provided a chronicle of the genesis and evolution of this illustrious creature: “Rarely do we discuss the obscure history of the Silverfish. Legend has it that after centuries of persecution for being the smallest fish in the Indian Ocean, their grand council organized an exodus across the Pacific. Banded together in a massive school, they appeared fearful and easily scared away their prey. Upon reaching the Western coast of the Americas, they spent several decades slowly flopping onto land and acquiring the ability to walk. From there, they migrated across land to the most remote areas of the continent—which is why we now host them within our walls.” 

He went on to say, “I would love to tell the tale of a student who captured a CC Lab Silverfish, brought it home, and taught it how to write in cursive. In order to protect his privacy, I cannot. Great battles have been fought in room 34, however, which resulted in an armistice which endures today. When I first came to teach here in the fall, I knew very little about Silverfish. They quickly acquired a taste for my Costco brand coffee and mobilized to rob me of it on a daily basis. I lost 3 coffee mugs to them in my first week.

“My grievances against them piled up every day: several packages of Oreos were consumed during the night; they would gather on the walls and spell out profanities to taunt me while class was taking place; students would lose homework to them as they focused on doing exit tickets; something had to be done. Meetings were scheduled with their leaders. After nearly 5 weeks, I reached a compromise with them—in exchange for a cessation of hostilities and thefts, they would be allowed to reside in the nine vacant Chrome Carts that line the Tiger Trail. For some reason, they felt like anything “chrome” should essentially belong to them. Since that day (and hopefully forever) we have lived in harmony. I do not recommend disturbing them in their new-found habitat lest you incur their wrath.”

One anonymous individual, self-referred to as “Traumatized Weightlifter,” explained, “On any given day in the gym and weight room, you will find a thriving herd of silverfish. The conditions of these rooms are perfect. With the outlandish humid heat that is pumped in from the growling vents above, the decaying leftover food, spilled and molding drinks, and discarded clothing, the silverfish have found their utopia. As I walk through these parts of the school, I cannot help but keep my eyes glued to the floor looking for the disturbing little mutants. Occasionally, I will pick up a sweatshirt or bag that was left on the floor and shake it. Without fail, there are at least three silverfish that fall out and scurry away. Often, there are five or six that fall out. I try to squish them, but they are speedy little demons. Their thick and crunchy exoskeleton makes it a challenge to kill them on the first stomp.

“Last year, when the drinking fountain in the weight room had a leak, the water seeped underneath the black rubber flooring and stayed there for weeks. One particular day after school I was on the floor doing an abdominal workout and I noticed a surprising number of silverfish sharing the floor with me. As I looked closer, I saw that they were scurrying between the cracks in the black rubber flooring. I peeled back one of the rubber squares and to my horrifying dismay, there was a city of silverfish. Immediately, I forgot about my workout and began pulling up every corner to see the horrors that lay beneath. I squished over one hundred silverfish and even more scurried away. Sick to my stomach, I left the weight room to look for help. I found a spray bottle with what I hoped was the strongest chemical ever created and dumped it in the cracks. I will never again, lay on a weight room floor.”

One must ponder what silverfish stories Scientology founder Lafayette Ronald Hubbard would’ve had for us, were he still alive. 

In case you didn’t know, Hubbard was a Junior at HHS during the 1927-28 school year. He even wrote for the now-defunct jokes column of our very own Nugget, and a grand total of one (1) actual article about a trip he supposedly went on the year prior.

He dropped out after his Junior year wrapped up, joined the military, and went off to go make the cult that outlived him, but we don’t really care about that, at least not for the purposes of this article. Why randomly bring up L. Ron Hubbard, then? It’s quite simple, really. 

While his time at HHS was very short, Hubbard did go here. Meaning one simple thing:

He would have encountered SILVERFISH!!!!!!!

Back to our current infestation, Mrs. Schulte wrote, “I was cleaning my bookshelves at the end of year – so moving books and notebooks and binders off and wiping them all off. I picked up a pile of binders that had been sitting there for awhile and a massive amount of silverfish skittered out of it and fell off the shelf onto the counter and all over. The most disgusting thing I’ve seen. . . besides the silverfish on the toilet paper.”

Mrs. Gustafson in attendance noted, “I don’t have a “best” silver fish story but I am plagued by silver fish in the attendance office every. Single. Day. The end.”

But, for all the justified misgivings people have for silverfish, have you ever thought that, maybe, there’s a better way? 

Just think about it!

Instead of just begrudgingly existing alongside these pests, what if—and bear with us on this one—we incorporated them into our meal plans?

Nugget staff member Thomas questioned HHS’ resident Health Instructor, Mr. Straub, about this. While he couldn’t give definitive, 100%, down-to-the exact-calories-and-nutritional-amount details, his expertise gave him the ability to make some educated guesses.

“Since silverfish are mostly exoskeleton, they’re likely high in protein. Also, probably low in carbs and fat. They eat fabrics, cellulose from paper, and other, non-toxic bugs, so there’s not much danger of them being dangerous for people to eat,” theorized Mr. Straub. “ Maybe if you have an allergy, but that’s all I can think of.”

So, if you’re hungry but don’t want a school lunch (valid), taking a bite out of a fistful of silverfish is a viable option!

From all of us on the Nugget staff, we hope these stories have not jeopardized our relationship with the silverfish clan. We eagerly look forward to many more years of civil and respectable relationships, if only so we may delude them into a false serenity and open them up to our voraciousness later down the line.

RuPaul turned herself into a silverfish. Funniest thing I’ve ever seen