Short on cash but not affection, a Tamaulipas primary school student did what he could to give his teacher a present for her birthday.

Teacher Esthefany Gutiérrez Hernández of Matamoros recounted the story on Facebook, recalling that the student had told her he had no money to buy a gift but would bring her one regardless.

Some days later, the student approached his teacher to say he had brought the present, “but I had to hide it because I thought the other teachers might not let me into school with it.”

After receiving her permission to retrieve it, he returned several minutes later carrying a large cardboard box with holes on one side and held shut with a piece of string.

Inside was a rooster.

Said the student: “I picked out the prettiest one I had just for you! I don’t have the money to buy you anything, but I hope you like roosters.”

Knowing the youngster rode to school on a bicycle every day, the teacher asked how he managed to carry the box. He found a neighbor to give him a ride, he said.

Gutiérrez wrote on Facebook that she not only appreciated the great effort to which her student had gone — finding a ride and then having to walk back home later, preparing the box and carefully hiding it —  in order to celebrate her birthday but the fact that the incident reminded her why she chose to be a teacher: “to give my all every day so that [her students] are better people.

“Thank you for reminding me why I love my job.”

Her post has received 216,000 likes and 24,000 comments and has been shared 71,000 times.

Source: El Universal (sp)