“Ten years or so ago, we had the mystery poet at NDA,” said English teacher Carolyn Brown.  “I would come to school in the morning and find a poem had been slid beneath my classroom door.  Other times I’d return to my classroom, and a new poem was sitting on my keyboard. We called it the ‘mystery poet’ and eventually did a story about the poems in the Tritonian. I would post the poem on my board and students would analyze the message and style to decipher who had submitted the handwritten poem. Never did learn who the poet was.”

Not so this time.  

The mystery of the tiny doll babies appearing around the building in the final weeks of school is solved. Madeline Gage, who graduated May 28, confessed she doesn’t really know why she “started the baby thing.”

“I saw them on Amazon, and I guess I just thought it would be a funny thing to do my senior year,” said Gage. 

“The first one I noticed,” said Brown, “was sitting in the corner of a window sill.  I was closing the window after school and saw it there–tiny, like a dead bug sitting on the ledge.  A few days later I saw one sitting atop the projector in my room.”

Gage explained how the baby mystery expanded:  “I started by giving out babies to all of my friends to distribute around the school, but then I just started handing them out to everyone.” 

“The whole thing added a bit of fun to the end of the year,” said the English teacher.  “I would tell my classes I had spied another ‘baby’ and they’d tell me where they too had seen one.  Maddie, a member of my IB English class as well as my advisory or homeroom, finally told me she had started the prank.”

The senior also told her English teacher, “I am pretty proud of the one that I taped to the speaker in your room.” 

All in all, Gage estimates around 300 tiny babies ended up in inconspicuous spots around the school. “I  won’t give up all of my hiding spots,” she added.