Who is the Pullstick Bandit?
It started in early October with a couple of harmless little practical jokes, the woods teacher (Mr. Kiihn) would find them and just throw them away. It then picked up to four or five a day and that’s when the problem started.
The things that the pranksters were making are called “pullsticks.” A “pullstick” is a version of mr. Kiihns Pushstick, anybody who has had woods with Mr. Kiihn is familiar with these Pushsticks. They are slabs of wood that resemble a boot a when you are using a machine, you push the wood through with a pushstick. A pullstick is made by flipping the base upside down and getting behind the machine and pulling the wood through.
Although these sticks were a good prank, Kiihn did not find them funny at all. He started looking for the culpret days after he started finding these tools. It started by him going around and asking questions to students, his suspects include Tommy Edmund, Matt Hogate and Shawn Kelley. All of these suspects were questioned and offered a reward for telling who the Pullstick Bandit was.
The person making these them were in Mr. Kiihn’s third hour class and although these “Pullsticks” were not a big problem at first, they rapidly increased in number and started showing up all over the Woods shop. “It got up to four or five a day,” says Hogate. This is when Kiihn really began to get frustrated.
With Hogate and Edmond being the top two suspects, the interrigations increased for them. When they would not give him anyinformation, he offered them both reward of A minuses to confess who the one making the Pullsticks was. When asked about this bribe to rat the pullstick Bandit out Edmond said, “You just don’t do that when there’s a great prank like this going, you just don’t want it to stop.”
The making of these Pullsticks finally stopped a few weeks ago with Kihn threatening to shut down shop class. Kiihn was very happy with the prank coming to an end and hopes other classes don’t start to make them.
Even though Mr. Kiihn thinks it was a good prank, he says, “Someone could have gotten hurt.” Many students, including Evan Kimlinger, who is is his second year of Woods class argue that it’s safer because you don’t have to push into the machine. Safer or not,these Pullsticks have been banned from Woods class.
Sinceit is still an open case, the Pullstick Bandit won’t reveal himself yet, but there is speculation that he will go public with his confession soon. Whoever the prankster who made these pullsticks is,he should be proud of a first-class prank and has changed Woods class forever.