Lavender puts a salamander in Trunchbull’s water jug

Lavender puts a salamander in Miss Trunchbull’s water jug by using a routine classroom duty as cover for a secret prank. The episode gives the plan a deliberate progression: a required jug and glass create the opportunity, a difficult capture supplies the hidden payload, and Lavender releases it into the water while the classroom is empty. It ends with the preparations complete but before Miss Trunchbull enters, leaving the prank’s effects outside the scene.

The classroom routine becomes an opportunity

Miss Honey tells the class that Miss Trunchbull expects a jug of water and a glass on the table whenever she comes in. Lavender immediately volunteers to fetch and prepare them. Her task is specific: before the lesson, she is to go to the kitchen, fill a jug, and set it beside a clean, empty glass. When Lavender asks what happens if there is no jug, she learns that the kitchen holds at least twelve jugs and glasses for Miss Trunchbull, which the whole school uses. The abundance makes the chore dependable—and gives Lavender access to the very object her plan will require.

Lavender’s willingness is not simply dutiful. Her mind is already examining the possibilities the water-jug task offers, and she longs to do something heroic. She admires Hortensia for her daring pranks and Matilda, who has privately told her about the parrot trick and the hair-oil switch that turned her father’s hair blonde. Those examples give Lavender models of resistance, but she wants a scheme of her own. The scene thus links her ambition to the other girls’ earlier acts without suggesting that they participate in her plan.

On the way home, Lavender turns the possibilities over until an idea begins to take shape. The narration compares her planning to Wellington preparing for Waterloo: Miss Trunchbull is cast, humorously but seriously, as a formidable opponent. Lavender believes she must be clever and keep the plan secret if she is to get through it safely. The military comparison makes a small school prank feel like a campaign, while also emphasizing that Lavender regards the headmistress’s authority as a genuine threat.

Capturing the salamander

Lavender’s chosen creature comes from the muddy pond at the back of her garden, where salamanders live. The narration describes them as shy, about fifteen centimetres long, grey-green above and orange underneath, and harmless despite their unsettling appearance. These details establish the contrast on which the prank depends: the animal is not dangerous, but its unfamiliar, almost crocodile-like look can make it seem alarming.

That evening, Lavender sets out to catch one. Salamanders are extremely quick, so she waits patiently beside the pond until a particularly large one appears. She drops her hat over it like a net, then tries to transfer it into a pencil box she has lined with water plants. The capture is awkward: the salamander wriggles like quicksilver, the box is only just big enough, and Lavender has to make sure its tail is not caught in the lid. A boy from the neighborhood has told her that a severed salamander tail can live and grow into a creature ten times larger, perhaps the size of a crocodile. Lavender does not entirely believe the story, but she is unwilling to risk it.

Once the lid is shut, the salamander is hers. Lavender pauses to leave the box slightly open so it can breathe. That small adjustment shows the care embedded in her scheme: she is preparing to use the animal to frighten Miss Trunchbull, not to injure it. The water plants, close-fitting container, and partially open lid all become practical parts of the plan rather than incidental details.

The release in the empty classroom

The next day, Lavender brings her secret weapon to school in her bag, thrilled by the prospect of telling Matilda what she intends to do. Although she would like to tell the whole class, she decides against it. Secrecy protects the plan from being betrayed, even under terrible torture. The narration’s reference to torture reflects the fear surrounding Miss Trunchbull’s rule, and the joke’s exaggerated language also conveys how seriously Lavender takes the danger of discovery.

The morning passes without action. At lunchtime, Lavender cannot eat; when asked whether she feels unwell, she says she ate so much at breakfast that she cannot manage anything more. Immediately after the meal, she goes to the kitchen and takes one of Miss Trunchbull’s distinctive jugs, a large, lumpy vessel made of blue-glazed earthenware. She fills it halfway with water, carries it and a glass into the classroom, and places them on the table. The room is still empty.

Lavender moves quickly. She takes the pencil box from her bag, opens its lid a little farther, and holds it directly over the jug. The salamander lies motionless until she tips it out. It splashes into the water and thrashes about for a few seconds before settling. Lavender then adds the water plants from the box so the animal will feel more at home. The practical requirements of the prank are now met: the salamander is in Miss Trunchbull’s jug, and the jug and glass occupy their expected place.

What the episode leaves unresolved

After the release, Lavender puts her pens and pencils back into the now rather damp pencil box and returns it to her desk. She then goes outside to join the other pupils in the playground, where she waits for school to begin again. The action closes on this ordinary-looking departure, set against the extraordinary secret she has just completed.

The episode does not show Miss Trunchbull entering, discovering the salamander, or reacting to it. Its ending is therefore a pause at the point of maximum preparation rather than a record of the prank’s payoff. The contrast between Lavender’s careful arrangements and her return to the playground sustains the suspense: to the class, the jug is ready for a lesson; to Lavender, it contains the result of a plan she has kept to herself. Her use of an assigned chore also turns the school’s own routine into the means of challenging the authority it serves.