but everyone just shrugged and looked around. It seems that no one had been keeping track of one tiny friendly mouse with all the commotion. And thats when the mouse...

Squeaked from the teapot. It poked its snout out of the spout, sniffing the air for crumbs. And that's when a soot sprite noticed it and...

...tossed a bit of star candy at it. The mouse squeaked in alarm and...

Almost missed catching it, because its first instinct was to dodge. But it did scramble out of the spout and catch it with a nibble of its teeth at the last moment. Seeing this stellar performance, the other soot sprites started tossing treats to it, and the mouse...

...began to dance, happily stretching to catch each treat as it was tossed. After filling his arms with more treats than he could hold, the mouse skittered into a corner behind a curtain and began nibbling on his well-deserved stash. This caused the soot sprites, the Mayor, Vicky, and everyone else in attendance to...

...pull out their smartphones and snap tons of pictures and videos to post to social media later. The Mayor even started a livestream video and...

...thousands of comments started pouring in from all over the world! Some of them said...

...that this was the event of a century and they would have to send a team out to memorialize the event in a record book. In fact, they might even give the town a...

...giant statue of a soot sprite gifting a piece of cake to a mouse. When the team arrived for the memorialization ceremony, they found the residents of Menewsha...

...surprisingly asleep! What had happened? They tried to figure this out and...

...wondered whether this was the famous fabled Dormouse from the Mad Hatter's Tea Party, for that would explain the sleepiness! They woke the mouse to ask it whether this was so. It replied...

..."I have no idea what you're talking about..." But he looked pretty shifty and untrustworthy so....

...they went about trying to wake up all the Menewshans while keeping an eye on that Dormouse. Suddenly...

...the mouse grew 100 times in size, towering over the town like a massive rodent godzilla.

The fans from the livestream had brought a sculptor with them to memorialize the Soot Sprite Mouse Cake Incident (as it shall henceforth be called), and upon seeing the Massive Rodent Godzilla, the sculptor let out a soft gasp and raised her hand to her heart. "My word!" she called out. "You are beautiful, sir mouse, you must let me capture your essence in stone!" but the gigantic Mousezilla just replied...

"SQUEAK" in a deep, booming voice and raised its ginormous paw...

...in the shape of a thumbs-up. It was that moment that was memorialized forever and also that moment when the people of Menewsha began to...

...use a thumbs up as a form of greeting throughout the land! That is, until...

...Peeblo started telling people to do it upside down because that was way more fun. Why, even the mayor decided to do that at a press conference which cause quite the stir when the reporters...

...asked Mr. Mayor whether he liked his job, at which he flashed them a thumbs up but upside down!

(I love how completely nutty this story is. You guys are great)

The reporters were aghast! "You mean you don't like your job Mr. Mayor!" she exclaimed and pointed at his upside down thumbs up, which caused ....

Mr. Mayor to blush furiosly. " No, i uh," he stumbled, "I don't know why...

...you would think that. Of course I like my job. See?" He shook his upside-down thumbs-up for emphasis. Later when papers printed the Mayor's picture from the press conference next to his statue, it was clear that the statue was making the same gesture. Indeed, all statues of public figures in Menewsha had been making that gesture since the legendary Mousezilla started the practice. To understand this culture better, the press...

...started to visit other countries to see if the upside-down thumbs-up was prevalent elsewhere as well. Through their research, they found...

...That almost no culture did what the mayor had done. Except, on a small tropical island where even the dogs...