Trick or Treat in a Candy Jar

Just a humorous and slightly horrifying observation about something that happened recently. We often have rodent difficulties in our building and I remember one year when I caught no fewer than thirteen (yes, 13!) mice in my room over a two month period. They were located in various mouse traps strewn over the room, under desks....sometimes three to a trap...fascinating, yes... but enough about that incident.

Recently, a colleague experienced something slightly more gross. Hold on to your hats. She had an extremely large candy jar in her room. At one point, she left the jar open...apparently long enough for a stray rodent to wander into or fall into the jar. There must have been a lot of candy in the jar because apparently the creature expired in sugar ecstasy amidst the gum drops, candy corn and peppermints. To be very explicit, it died right smack in the middle of the jar and remained there for a substantial time. Of course, the teacher and others noticed the smell and the search was on over a couple of days to locate the offensive odor. Dead mice smell like dirty sneakers, in case anyone is interested but apparently this dirty sneaker odor was camouflaged by all the sugar. It was the custodian who finally discovered the dead mouse in the middle of the jar and I shudder to think how he figured it out. Individuals, including teachers and students regularly ate candy off the top part of the supply. One can only hope that candy was all they ingested.

Life is never boring in our building. I assure you that the lid of my candy jar is always screwed on tight! Perhaps this will be the year when I stop eating candy.