When Bad Things Happen To Good Mice

When Bad Things Happen To Good Mice
by John Forster & Tom Chapin
© 2010 Limousine Music Co. & The Last Music Co. (ASCAP)

First rule of a Lab Mouse, never volunteer.
When you see that Big Hand,
Try and disappear.
Hide behind the treadmill
And you might not have to go
And find yourself strung out on Sweet'n'Low.

My Daddy was in the Control Group,
And Mama was too.
If you're not in the Control Group
They experiment on you.
Ask any mouse in any lab
And they'll give you the scoop,
You got to, got to stay in the Control Group!

The Big Hand got my sister,
Grabbed her by the legs,
Scrubbed her down with Phisohex
And doctored up her eggs.
We knew her kids when they were born
Would be a total mess,
But that's the price of progress, I guess.
Time went by my sisters kids returned.
They took some tests
To see how fast they learned.
They raced the maze,
They aced the hardest part.
And then they ran it backwards.
Geez these kids were smart!

This Control Group's feeling dumb and dumber.
Einstein in a lab mouse, what a bummer.
We realized the Super Mouse
Would now become routine.
Our next litter had to have that gene.

So next time we saw the Big Hand
We bravely volunteered
To have our genes upgraded
And our kids re-engineered.
But it took us past the Smart Lab
Into a Land of Chrome
Where it strapped us down
And gave us a shot
That activated a mystery gene
Somewhere down there
On our thirteenth chromosome.

My Daddy was in the Control Group
And Mama was too,
But the paradigm has shifted,
Now everything is new.
And any mouse who plays it safe
Is on a dead end page.
The mouse today is not afraid
To think outside the cage.
I saw a chance, I took a shot,
I was not afraid to fail.
And that is how I got my extra tail.

This song appears on Tom Chapin's Broadsides CD.

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