Finding Stevie

Where is Stevie?!

On February 24th, it was a dark blizzardy morning when our professor broke the news to us that our beloved mascot Stevie Pointer had been abducted. This news was very shocking! Our first thought was “Oh no!, he escaped the building and is in the horrid below freezing weather outside.” But, our professor reassured us that Stevie was last seen in the lobby sleeping, by the winding staircase. Stevie usually likes to wander around the dusty vents of the library. This was predictable, but we were uncertain why he did not return to his bed under the front desk. It was up to us to find him amongst the winding bookshelves of the Library. We decided to set out to find clues which would lead us to our mischievous Stevie. In order to complete the daunting task, we had to find his painted purple paw prints which would lead us to him!

Our first step was to travel about the first floor of the library. We came across a large reference room filled with encyclopedias on almost anything you can imagine. Of course there was one to tell us about every type of dog known in the world. We stumbled across the Encyclopedia of the Dog and found a page dedicated to the English Pointer. Now, not only did we have a picture of what Stevie looks like but we also came across a large letter written on the page. It was the letter V, our first clue! However, what did this letter mean?

The next idea we had was to check out the Natural History Museum located on the first floor. Stevie loved to check out the other animals and learn more about what types of animals the world holds. As we were heading there, an astounding sight caught our attention. A shark was found hanging from the ceiling! However, a strange purple paw also caught our eyes on the wall behind the shark. It was our first painted purple paw that was left by Stevie! The paw informed us to check out the Pacific Golden Plover Egg in the museum to give us another clue. Upon looking in the museum, we were baffled and lost throughout hundreds of different bird eggs. However, through the investigative search, we found it. It was not to hard to find with Stevie’s scent of wet dog smell. We noticed the letter A painted on the egg. Alass, we had found a second letter.

We traveled up the first set of stairs in the library and see if we could find something in the student newspaper. After all, the newspaper is named after Stevie and very well may give us a hint about his whereabouts. Once we found a current issue of the newspaper, we noticed three of Stevie’s friends sitting on the shelf also looking very worried. We asked if they had any idea of Stevie’s whereabouts. They said that they had last seen Stevie on the third floor by the CD’s. They kindly gave to us our third letter: E, and wished us luck in the search of finding their beloved friend. Once again, we were off to the third floor.

 

Climbing the staircases was tiring, but the motivation to find Stevie made us run with lots of adrenaline. Heading to the third floor, we rushed to find his painted paw print located by the tall, filing cabinet of tunes. But first we noticed their was a call number. The number was very helpful to located one of Stevie’s favorite album, “Get Yer Ya- Ya’s Out!”. The Rolling Stones popped out of their album, came to life and told us the next letter of the riddle was “R”. Next they told us to hurry up to the next floor up!

After our search throughout the CD’s, we received a call saying the kidnapper had  been spotted. He was running throughout the fourth floor trying to make an escape. We dashed up the next set of stairs and burst through the doors leading to the fourth floor. We spotted the kidnapper as none other than Charlie Chaplin! We chased him throughout the floor as he made a dash into a group study room. We cornered him and demanded he tell us Stevies whereabouts. He said we won’t find him but we did find another letter he had in his pocket. The letter was C and he also revealed that he had another hostage that was being held on the fifth floor!

We made our way to the fifth floor to find the hostage who was being held somewhere within the many rows of books!  As we walked down each of the isles, we saw books of every topic imaginable. We finally reached the zoology section and when we looked up, we found the hostage sitting on top of the bookshelf!  Not only did we save the hostage, Mr. Orangutan, we found Stevie’s clue that revealed our next letter, H.

Carrying Mr. Orangutan on Logan’s back, we started to search for a clue within the vast wonders of the sixth floor of the library.  On the sixth floor, there are U.S. government publications as far as the eye can see where a student can find almost anything.  As we searched the publications, we found the unmistakable pawprint by the SuDocs call number poster.  We found the next letters by looking for the first two letters of the call number for publications by the Smithsonian Institution which were S and I. This was the last clue to finding Stevie! We rushed to figure out where he has been kidnapped.

After successfully figuring out all the clues, we were left with eight letters that we had to unscramble.  Stevies location in the library would be revealed by unscrambling them.  We sat down and beads of sweat dripped down our faces because we knew time was running out.  A few intense moments later we successfully unscrambled the letters to reveal Stevie’s location: the Archives.  We dashed down a flight of stairs as fast as our legs would take us.  We took a sharp right turn into the archives of the library, busted through the heavily locked door, and immediately saw Stevie Pointer’s happy face.  We were physically and mentally exhausted, yet filled with the joy of rescuing our mascot.  As we left the library with Stevie the clouds let up, the blizzard stopped, and the sun shined brightly upon our faces. Stevie was happy to be back with us!

By: Logan, Janelle, and Ashton

We found him!