Mousetrap

SCENE: It is a sunny Monday morning, bright with sunshine and possibilities as Lauren arrives at another day of work.  Having just finished listening to Michael Bolton's Christmas cd, completely satisfying the Christmas light-rock regions of her soul, she ascends the stairs and walks over to her desk.  As she approaches her desk, her coworker in the cubby next to her, greets her...

Alicia: "There's a rat in the ceiling."

Lauren: "What?!"

Alicia: "I heard something scurrying about in the ceiling or something and I think there's a rat up there."

Lauren: "Okay...well, uh, hmm, that's interesting." (Silently Lauren thinks to herself, "A rat in the ceiling? Riiiiggghhttt....")

...A few hours go by, Lauren and Alicia working away at the day's various tasks.  Then, as Lauren is sitting at her desk, typing an email to her boss, she all of the sudden hears a scurrying noise.  Mid-sentence, she pauses, and looks over at her group of Christmas boxes that sit underneath a section of her desk.  She waits a moment, listening intently, because she was sure that she heard something and a feeling of dread washes over.  After hearing nothing for a few moments, she goes back to her email, only to be interrupted again by the noise...

Lauren: "Alicia did you hear that?"

Alicia: "Hear what?"

Lauren: "That scurrying noise?"

Alicia: "Uh-oh - no, but see..."

...As Alicia is speaking, Lauren hears the scurrying noise for a third time and knowing/dreading what that noise means, launches her rolling chair away from her desk and glides away from the corner.  As her chair rolls to a stop, she pivots away and quickly as she can in her heels, flies down the stairs, through the offices, through the showroom and to the back warehouse to find her trusted warehouse manager and friend, Jimmy to come and take care of the scurrying problem.  However to her dismay, she finds that Jimmy is nowhere to be found.  Failing to locate Jimmy, she quickly traverses back to into the office portion of the building and finds Brian Boyle sitting at his desk...

Lauren: sweet, urgent voice "Hey Brian, what are you doing? Are you working on anything important?"

Brian: hesitantly "Hey LT.  No, just working on some billing. Why, what's up?"

Lauren: "Well, I have a scurrying problem that I need someone to come and take a look at."

Brian: "A scurrying problem?"

Lauren: "Yes, a scurrying problem - please, come, quick!"

Brian: "Ok, I'll be right there."

...Brian goes off to the kitchen, where he meets his coworker, Pat Pinkman, and together they make their way to the upstairs offices.  Meanwhile, Lauren has gone back upstairs, is relaying the situation to Alicia and standing outside of her cubby, looking at the dreaded corner.  Brian and Pat finally make it upstairs....

Lauren: "I think the Christmas boxes is where the noise is coming from..."

...As Lauren relays this information, Brian and Pat start moving some of the boxes, remarking how they don't see anything, while Lauren looks anxiously on over the glass wall of her cubby.  Then out of nowhere, as the last box is removed, a blur of gray scoots across the back corner of Lauren's desk area...

Lauren: "AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

...Upon seeing the mouse, Lauren runs down the stairs, into the front lobby, hyperventilating.  Brian and Pat react to this as if Lauren has sprouted three heads.  The next moment later, unable to be drawn away from the horrific scene, she makes her way back up the stairs, only to discover from Brian and Pat that they had let the mouse get away...

Lauren: "What do you mean that it got away? Where did it go???"
Brian & Pat: "It got away, sorry. Don't know where it went.  Maybe you should get rid of some of the cracker boxes that you have around your desk, as you have like 8 boxes sitting around here."
Lauren: "Being that as it may, there is still the issue that there is a MOUSE here! What are you going to do?!"
Brian & Pat: "Uh...don't know."

...As Lauren processes this with wide eyes, she realizes that yet again she must find a solution to the problem.  So with the intent of getting a mousetrap to dispatch the rodent with, she goes downstairs and asks Miss Joan if there are any mousetraps around.  Finding that there are only traditional mousetraps around, she takes one back upstairs to Pat & Brian, but does not want to use this particular trap because she does not want to see the dead mouse.  She needs a more humane mousetrap, the kind that capture the mice but you never see them once captured - they are just contained in the black container of death.  So she grabs her purse, which she was informed could possibly contain the mouse because the boys did not know where it had gone, and quickly marches off to the local Bloom grocery store to find her humane mousetrap.  Thankfully Bloom does not disappoint, having several varieties available.  Locating the appropriate D-Con trap that she needs, Lauren makes her purchase, along with her lunch, happens to run into a past coworker that she quickly says hello to and decides against relaying the current trauma that she is in, as she needs to get back to her desk to set the trap.  Back at the office, Brian and Pat have set the traditional mousetrap in the corner where they last saw the mouse and once Lauren returns, informs her that the trap is there.  Regardless, Lauren puts down her humane mousetrap, and now a competition has entailed to see who's trap captures the mouse first...

...A quick five minutes later, between the time it took Lauren to place the trap, walk back downstairs to stick her lunch in the microwave, and then back up the stairs with the intent to check her emails quickly to see if she had received any pressing emails during the time of this ordeal (during which time, her coworker Alicia had erected a barricade in front of the entrance of her cubby in the hopes of keeping the offending rodent out of her cubby), she glances over to where the traps were set and to her horror sees the inhumane trap flipped upside down with a grey mass sticking out from underneath it...

Lauren: "AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

...Again Lauren flies down the stairs in utter fright.  Pat & Brian having heard Lauren's yell from the back of the offices, nonchalantly made their way back up the stairs, curious to see which trap had succeeded.  Upon learning that the inhumane trap (their trap) had worked, they congratulated themselves, shook their heads at Lauren's fright, and grabbing their foe by its tail, disposed of it in the dumpster...

End Scene