We had a math teacher at school who claimed that he had heard every excuse. He told us that the only way anyone could be excused from doing their homework was if they came up with an excuse he'd never heard before.

My father used to keep birds and one night his aviary blew down and a lot of his birds escaped. Well the whole family was out all evening on the great budgie roundup trying to catch as many as we could.

The next day at school, the teacher lived up to his word and I was the only one in our year who was ever excused homework in his class. But I had to promise him that I wouldn't tell anyone else what the excuse was. (I guess the statute of limitations is up by now though)

Bert. (we caught most of them)