On my first day back at Penn, I tripped over a dead mouse. I was wearing flip-flops. At the corner of 38th and Sansom, I felt something wet and furry brush against my big toe, and then I fell down. After closely inspecting the lump that rested peacefully on the sidewalk, I laughed and looked around. Nobody had shared my discovery.
The next day, on my way back from class, I decided on a whim to walk down Sansom, so I could check on my mouse. I figured someone must have removed it by then, but I found, to my acute pleasure, that it was still there. It looked exactly the same--wet, furry, and lumpy. I looked around again, half in hope that someone might see me inspecting the sidewalk and decide to join me by the dead mouse. But nobody came. Nobody even walks down that street, I came to realize.
Checking on the mouse became something of an obsessive ritual for me. Everyday, on my way to and from class, I'd walk by the mouse to make sure it was still there. And sure enough, it always was. It did not emit a foul odor, and it did not attract attention to itself. It was a perfect, modest mouse.
My friend and I wrote a song about the mouse. We called it "Velvety Mousy." The next day, I checked on my mouse as usual. Only this time, to my chagrin, I found that my mouse was entirely different. Instead of being rotund and velvety, it looked as though it had been ironed flat into the cement, and its fur--now rough and sandpapery--was coming apart from the bones. Someone must have run a bike over the poor thing. The only characteristically mousy thing left about it was its protruding tail. If I didn't know better I would have mistaken it for a mole. At least now, I knew for sure that the mouse would never be removed. It was there to stay--a permanent fixture in the otherwise unblemished sidewalk.
In a world of terrible surprises and unpredictable events, we can all rest assured that one thing will never change. Neither rain nor cold can drive him away. The mouse on Sansom is here to stay.
If he were still alive, I wondered for a fleeting moment, would things be the same between mouse and me? I sighed and went on my way.
Let's just hope they don't decide to repave the sidewalk.
