life on a stratovolcano ^{oshima edition}

Ah, the question of the day. Evidently we have a mouse problem in the office, which I missed due to my inability to give anything even remotely resembling attention during the morning meetings. I really should have pieced this together when I saw the “Wanted” sign complete with a picture of a very adorable mouse above the sink in the staffroom. Unfortunately, if a sheet of paper has even one Japanese character on it, I tend to actively ignore it. This lead to a near-disaster about ten minutes ago, when I reached down to grab some of the delicious omiyage (random souvenir food) that someone had left out. As I reached for it, one of my ever-helpful co-workers asked me what the hell I was doing, causing me to lose interest in said omiyage. I grabbed my bento (store-prepped lunch box) out of the bag, cleared out a spot on the staffroom table as best as I could (which isn’t very much — this place can look like a landfill sometimes) and began chowing down on it. At this point, the English teacher across the table asked me a very disconcerting question.

Him: “Why are you eating your lunch on the mouse poison?”
Me: “Umm… What?”
Him: “That box is mouse poison. See all the mice on it?”
Me: “I thought that was some year-of-the-rat thing!”
Him: “Nope, mouse poison.”

As it turns out, the scrumptious omiyage — that I had been so viciously food-blocked from by my co-worker — was actually rat poison. Very tasty looking rat poison, but poison nonetheless. One disconcerting feature of this is that it lacked the familiar “eat me and become me” skull-and-crossbones pattern. Since this, I’ve started contemplating other things that I’ve accidentally ingested that I probably wasn’t supposed to. I mean, if Paulette washed her clothes with bubble bath for a very long time, and Rob kept dishsoap for shampoo (granted, he doesn’t have very much hair), then what I have I bought and eaten that isn’t actually food? Am I using “DO NOT EAT” silica gel for seasoning? Am I slowly building up a Rasputin-like tolerance to all things deadly? All I know is that I’m going go and learn the kanji for “poison” right now. Wish me luck.