Still, it did mean he didn’t have to strain his already perfectly good eyes to scour the floor for crumbs and scraps of food that people had dropped during the day. His nightly routine of crisscrossing the library floor for something to nibble on had served him well over the years. Every now and then he would strike it rich: an entire Oreo cookie wedged between a desk and a bookshelf; a sandwich crust that had missed the garbage can and landed on the floor; a piece of cheese, nearly dry but still perfectly edible, fallen under a chair.
It struck him as funny that, on the few occasions that he saw humans eating in the library during the day, they seemed to do so furtively, glancing this way and that, as if to make sure nobody was watching. Were they afraid other humans would eat their food? Were they watching out for predators? He couldn’t imagine predators big enough to eat humans.
On this particular night, the food selection was not as abundant as other nights. The cleaning staff was less haphazard about their duties: perhaps there were complaints about their unthorough performance. All the mouse could find were a few crumbs of tortilla chips and several small fragments of pretzels.
He paused as he finished the last piece of pretzel, pointed his nose in the air and sniffed for any remaining morsel of food in that vicinity. He then scurried off to his hole in the wall, where he had saved part of the Oreo cookie for a slow night.
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