On Wednesday, December 4th, Tiny Tim, the beloved toy of the Carlson Library tragically went missing.

Tiny Tim comes from a long line of predecessors, including Little Grinch, Hermie the Elf, and Little Snoopy. Every Christmas, the Carlson Library has a themed decoration, and a toy to go along with it that is hidden around the library for students to find. This year, the theme was Muppets Christmas, and so Tiny Tim arrived: a mini Kermit the frog with a little hat.

After the arrival of Tiny Tim, students and faculty rushed to participate in the event, as when you find him, you get a raffle ticket and  are entered to win a handmade pillow or quilt made by librarian Anthony Powers’ wife, Mrs. Powers. You then hide Tiny Tim again for others to find and get your picture posted on the student life instagram.

Christmas spirit was high as dozens flooded into the library every day to find him, until tragedy struck.

Powers was on Kairos, a three day overnight retreat away from campus, the day Tiny Tim went missing. Before he left on that Wednesday morning, he checked on him, who was still peacefully sleeping in the same spot he was last hidden.

Little did Powers know, by the time he was to return, Tiny Tim would be gone.

Senior Natalie Dabrowski was one of the last people to find Tiny Tim before he went missing. She hid him last period the day before he went missing, in a pile of fluff. The next day, she tried to look for him, but couldn’t find him in the spot they hid him in, so she believes that “someone found him and took him.”

Dabrowski said, “We were worried about him, and we were also scared that people were going to blame us for his disappearance.”

While Powers was gone, Director of Student Activities  Chris Petersen and Assistant Director Britt Parker took over monitoring the search.

Parker was in her car, after leaving early for the day. She had gone to the Student Government meeting Wednesday morning and then left at 9:15 a.m. The last people she remembers hiding Tiny Tim were three juniors: Carter Jurecko, Jayden Ellis and Fin Manning who hid him on Tuesday.

Petersen had called her, asking for where Tiny Tim was, and after telling him the spot where he was left, he informed her that he was not there.

According to Petersen, that morning there was a lot of activity and no adult was in the library. After no one could find him after hours of searching, they knew that he was either hidden too well or stolen.

“I was a little bit panicked when he called me, because there was really nothing I could do because I was leaving for the day.” Parker said.

So, in the interim, Tiny Tim was replaced by Bumble, a yeti from the Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer theme a couple years ago, while waiting for his cousin Tiny Tony, an identical Kermit the Frog toy, to arrive from the Amazon.

Petersen posted an “SOS” on Instagram, and even blocked Powers on Instagram until he was found.

”Mr. Powers put a lot of time and energy into this and I didn’t want to let him down, that we lost him on his first day off campus.” Petersen said.

On Tuesday, December 10th, senior Lorelei Travers walked into the library. She had spent an hour the previous day searching for Tiny Tim with her friends, so she was shocked when she found him, sitting on a shelf, after she moved a book.

This meant that sometime Tuesday morning Tiny Tim arrived back in the library. As Parker said, “someone was strategic about doing it when no one else saw him get put there.”

As soon as he was found, Parker remembers audibly gasping, and sprinting out of her office into the library. She said she was “in disbelief.”

Many different theories have spread about where Tiny Tim was before he came home.

“I like to think that he went on a Christmas adventure somewhere.” Powers said, “Maybe he went out to the woods, where the frogs are. I don’t know. It’s kind of a mystery.”

Parker agrees with this theory, as she said, “I think Tiny Tim just really wanted an adventure outside of DePaul, and so he hopped on a plane and went south for a week to escape the Chicago winter we were having.”

Some are more cynical, believing that someone purposefully stole Tiny Tim from the library. Senior Terry Fabianski believes that someone may have stolen Tiny Tim “because everyone wants the quilt.”

“It might be a little bit of clout in stealing Tiny Tim solely because he was all over the Instagram.” Parker said.

Despite his tumultuous adventure, Powers hopes to continue on this tradition in the future.

“It sometimes brings people into the library who maybe aren’t necessarily here.” Powers said, “And I always feel that if we get people into the library, I can talk to them about other things, like books.”