An enhanced view of Higgins' cage.

The first discovery of Higgins' secret programs came when a lab technician was changing his soiled woodchips and found a miniature Guttenberg Press that Higgins was using to print pamphlets about gerbils' rights, and a Ninety-Five-Thesis rip-off, citing numerous improprieties within the "Clatholic Clurch." Dr. Sam Tomkins is said to be amazed by the gerbil's social conscience, but can't help but giggle at his poor spelling.

Among Higgins’ other endeavors are a bare-bones telegraph operation with which he has been able to communicate with a member of the lab staff who was a telegraph operator in the Korean War, and a crude flying machine that has had only rudimentary testing since Higgins isn’t allowed out of his glass cage.

Cute and furry on the outside, Higgins’ handlers say that he has a real mean streak, especially when he drinks.

The moonshine still that Higgins used “recreationally,” according to his telegraph communications, was confiscated by the lab after he tried to fling his feces at the staff with his primitive catapult. According to the scientists, the moonshine Higgins was making was the human equivalent of two drops of children’s cold medicine diluted in eight ounces of water, but still strong enough to put the gerbil genius on his ass.

No one at Medco is sure what the future holds for Higgins or what benefit he might have to the human race.

Thus far, attempts to mate him with a female gerbil have all ended fruitlessly, Higgins claiming that he needs a girl “he can share intelligent conversation with,” leaving scientists to watch Higgins sit in his easy-chair listening to his victrola, possibly the last of his line.