Of Dead Mice and Men and Chocolate.

We have had some rodent problems in the motorpool. It's a garage so it's got plenty of places for little mice and bugs and spiders to creep in at night. I don't mind them much. I actually find them funny. We slept over at the motorpool once and had eatten a cookie before bed, leaving the wrapper on a table just above my head. At one point during the night a mouse tried to get to the wrapper and the crumbs it contained by crawling over my blanket. It scared me at first and then I realized what was going on. I put the wrapper on the floor and quitely watched the mouse squeeze inside and eat up all the crumbs. I giggled to myself and fell back to sleep. Later it got into my quaker rice cake that I had left on the desk. I chuckled and thought that I need to be more careful. The same thing happened to a co-worker and he thought traps and poision. I proceeded to talk him out of it, explaining that as long as we had food in the motorpool we would have mice. No matter how many you kill. And the mice were saved to munch another day.
That next monday I was taking out the trash and found a dead mouse in the bottom of the can. Apparently the little guy had jumped in from a near by table for some snacks and after eatting had realized he couldn't get back out again. I was a little sad but he had jumped in himself so I guess it was fair. The heat in the motorpool through the weekend must have done him in. There was a break room around the corner that I'm sad to say doesn't get cleaned well and three offices that have small stashes of food, but the little guy couldn't pass up that trash can. He found a way in, got his reward, and meet his end. All that for a few crumbs.
As I thought about the mouse I thought "we do very similar things". Okay metaphoric similar things but still. We get an idea of what we want, we go through great pains to get it, and sometimes (not all the time, as I'm sure this was not the first daring feat that this mouse had made in the quest for food) we kill ourselves reaching for it. Some how the risks always seem worth it. In love, work, friendship, and family, who wouldn't go to great lenghts to get what they most desire.
Oh, I seem to have left out the contents the little mouse was after. It was a swiss cake roll wrapper. So we all understand the blinding effect chocolate can have on us.