SEPT 12, 2024 | NEWS | By Anya Potsiadlo
Last year’s Loomis residents have long since departed their freshman year stomping grounds, leaving behind the formerly muraled walls, creaky elevators, amusing RLC emails and for certain residents, the lingering fear that rodents will re-invade their rooms.
As for the mice themselves, they are seemingly unphased by the resident turnover and have wasted no time re-establishing themselves in the Loomis community.
“I was at the gym when an invitation came to our Priddy group chat about a dead mouse funeral,” said Loomis resident Grant Loui, ‘28.
The mouse was originally found by Emmie Zarb ‘28, who encountered the late mouse under her bed around 7 p.m. that same night.
“Ironically, our theme for our hallway is mice, so there’s actually a mouse on my door for my nametag,” said Zarb.
She said she doesn’t believe the RA intended to reference the rodent infestations of years before, but the parallels between the real and clipart mice are striking.
“[The mouse] actually looks eerily similar to the nametag,” said Loui.
The mouse, whose life was honored last week, was named Rupert — though given the long history of infestations in Loomis, this mouse may have known multiple names over the course of its reign in the dorm.
Last year, a peanut-loving rat was found not far from Zarb’s room, in Nolan Diffley ‘27 and Dillon Fowle’s ‘27 third-floor room, where it was named “Faye Burke,” in honor of Faye Burke ‘27.
Zarb immediately downloaded Canva upon finding Rupert. She splurged for the premium version and made a flier for Rupert’s funeral, which was disseminated via her Instagram story. It was also shared by Zarb to many group chats, where it was found by Loui.
“Apparently we were supposed to dress up so I wore my nice Crocs. Some people wore suits and stuff,” said Loui, who contributed to the proceedings by bringing candles he procured for free at the club fair earlier that week.
Zarb said that the funeral lasted for around 30 minutes and was followed by a procession to the garbage can, and it was there that Rupert was finally laid to rest in a double-wrapping of plastic bags.