Specifically, this is the germ that causes Peterson's Disease, otherwise known as the Mouseball Flu. Peterson discovered it on a decidedly boring afternoon while sitting at his desk cleaning out his computer mouse. When he tried to place the ball back in the mouse, he was startled by his graduate student's Lebra (Lion-Zebra) and dropped it in a petri dish. He thought nothing of it, and simply left the dish out. When he returned after a long weekend of trying to think up ways to make his research on onions as cool as a Lebra, he found his dish was overgrown with the germ colony. He immediately administered it to the Lebra, which quickly died of a massive bowel movement. Peterson's Disease is best known for its apparently random symptoms within subjects - ranging from feeling like a nasty cold to the liquification of all organs ending with an "us" sound.