The Shameful Pineapple
I'll cut up some pineapple, I thought. I don't want it to go bad.
I placed it on the red cutting board, and started cutting through the prickly skin. Pineapples really are very easy to cut. Fresh pineapple, when extremely ripe, puts all other pineapple to shame, and we've all had the shameful pineapple, right?
It's like the title of a children's book: "The Shameful Pineapple" by Tremendous Moore.
It's the story of a little pineapple that posted pictures of the pricklier parts of its prickly skin on its social media accounts, and now the little pineapple has to face the consequences.
Please read this story to your children. It is the most relevant children's story today. You may wish your children to go to all the places and think of the future with "Oh, the Places You'll Go" by Dr. Seuss, but you need to make sure they also read "The Shameful Pineapple" so they don't post naughty pictures that will get them kicked out of college or fired from their jobs.
So, yes, now I believe we can all agree that canned pineapple is shameful.
With my orange-handled knife in my hand, I sliced and I sliced. I threw the ucky parts away and I chopped and chopped. The pineapple was juicy, so it was obviously going to be scrumptious.
Another famous children's author, Rhoald Dahl, would've seen the delicious pineapple drenched in its juices on the red cutting board and written something akin to: pineapplely delight so scrumpty-umptiously yellow!
And, people, he would've been right.
Except, something was wrong. On the cutting board, there were tiny, oblong, black specs.
I don't know about this, I thought. I'm not sure --
And then it hit me.
You see, we had come out of a winter where we dealt with something no one wants.
Not even famous children's author Tremendous Moore.
Mice.
Those little black bits were from the mice.
They were turds.
Tiny turds.
Teensy weensy mouse turds, and they were affixed to the pineapple I had just chopped. The pineapple was forever ruined. All of it went into the trash.
How on earth did mouse fecal matter get onto my pineapple? Befuddled was I. The pineapple had come from a glass bowl where we kept our fruit. The bowl sat on top of our island, which was on casters. It didn't touch any walls. It was wood. No cloth or cords hung around the island for a little mouse to climb.
I went over to the bowl. Then I went to the trash. All the fruit had to go. Nestled at the bottom of the bowl was more mouse defecation. The mouse fecal defied, and the fact a mouse could climb up the island mystified.
Then the thought came: the mouse wasn't just in our garage. The mouse had been in our kitchen, climbing up things, and dropping turds wherever it went.
I felt all the cringes and all the shudders.
It's not that I find mice to be disgusting. My instinct isn't to lay traps with cheese and stand on chairs with brooms, waiting to bash their heads in.
I thought mice wore little t-shirts and spoke to you in tiny voices. I thought mice, along with birds, had the ability to help clean up a room or sew clothes. I thought mice wore cute tiny hats, slept in matchboxes, and outwitted cats.
This is not the truth.
Mice do none of those things.
They poop tiny brown Tic-Tacs everywhere they step, which make me watch my step.
It's repulsive, and although I find mice and all their pooh to be vile, Wifefriend hates ants more.
This baffles me.
Mice, right? Rodents? Poop? Furry? Pooping in fruit bowls? Disease? Poop?
Ants don't concern me. People eat them chocolate-covered.
So, as winter ended making the mice no longer a problem, the snow melted to spring, allowing ants to become the new nuisance.
They walk militant in their lines, coming from God-knows-where, claiming my kitchen as theirs. I usually just spray our vinegar cleaning spray concoction and swipe them up in a paper towel. I lay out some ant traps where the meanest chemical in them is borax and go on with my day.
Although Wifefriend doesn't spasm and convulse on the kitchen floor at the sight of ants, she claims she doesn't like how they can get anywhere. Like, in cereal boxes. Cracker boxes. Cracker Jack boxes. That is what makes her skin crawl.
Okay, so ants can crawl all over and leave no trace. We really have no idea what their tiny ant feet have touched, but that's why they don't bother me as much. Mice leave fecal friends everywhere they go. Maybe I can't handle mice because they pooped on my pineapple.
That's a sight I cannot unsee.
I know there are worse things. There are, but those mouse turds were bigger than the ants that walk into our kitchen.
Bigger.
I placed it on the red cutting board, and started cutting through the prickly skin. Pineapples really are very easy to cut. Fresh pineapple, when extremely ripe, puts all other pineapple to shame, and we've all had the shameful pineapple, right?
It's the story of a little pineapple that posted pictures of the pricklier parts of its prickly skin on its social media accounts, and now the little pineapple has to face the consequences.
Please read this story to your children. It is the most relevant children's story today. You may wish your children to go to all the places and think of the future with "Oh, the Places You'll Go" by Dr. Seuss, but you need to make sure they also read "The Shameful Pineapple" so they don't post naughty pictures that will get them kicked out of college or fired from their jobs.
So, yes, now I believe we can all agree that canned pineapple is shameful.
With my orange-handled knife in my hand, I sliced and I sliced. I threw the ucky parts away and I chopped and chopped. The pineapple was juicy, so it was obviously going to be scrumptious.
Another famous children's author, Rhoald Dahl, would've seen the delicious pineapple drenched in its juices on the red cutting board and written something akin to: pineapplely delight so scrumpty-umptiously yellow!
And, people, he would've been right.
Except, something was wrong. On the cutting board, there were tiny, oblong, black specs.
I don't know about this, I thought. I'm not sure --
And then it hit me.
You see, we had come out of a winter where we dealt with something no one wants.
Not even famous children's author Tremendous Moore.
Mice.
Those little black bits were from the mice.
They were turds.
Tiny turds.
Teensy weensy mouse turds, and they were affixed to the pineapple I had just chopped. The pineapple was forever ruined. All of it went into the trash.
How on earth did mouse fecal matter get onto my pineapple? Befuddled was I. The pineapple had come from a glass bowl where we kept our fruit. The bowl sat on top of our island, which was on casters. It didn't touch any walls. It was wood. No cloth or cords hung around the island for a little mouse to climb.
I went over to the bowl. Then I went to the trash. All the fruit had to go. Nestled at the bottom of the bowl was more mouse defecation. The mouse fecal defied, and the fact a mouse could climb up the island mystified.
Then the thought came: the mouse wasn't just in our garage. The mouse had been in our kitchen, climbing up things, and dropping turds wherever it went.
I felt all the cringes and all the shudders.
It's not that I find mice to be disgusting. My instinct isn't to lay traps with cheese and stand on chairs with brooms, waiting to bash their heads in.
I thought mice wore little t-shirts and spoke to you in tiny voices. I thought mice, along with birds, had the ability to help clean up a room or sew clothes. I thought mice wore cute tiny hats, slept in matchboxes, and outwitted cats.
This is not the truth.
Mice do none of those things.
They poop tiny brown Tic-Tacs everywhere they step, which make me watch my step.
It's repulsive, and although I find mice and all their pooh to be vile, Wifefriend hates ants more.
This baffles me.
Mice, right? Rodents? Poop? Furry? Pooping in fruit bowls? Disease? Poop?
Ants don't concern me. People eat them chocolate-covered.
So, as winter ended making the mice no longer a problem, the snow melted to spring, allowing ants to become the new nuisance.
They walk militant in their lines, coming from God-knows-where, claiming my kitchen as theirs. I usually just spray our vinegar cleaning spray concoction and swipe them up in a paper towel. I lay out some ant traps where the meanest chemical in them is borax and go on with my day.
Although Wifefriend doesn't spasm and convulse on the kitchen floor at the sight of ants, she claims she doesn't like how they can get anywhere. Like, in cereal boxes. Cracker boxes. Cracker Jack boxes. That is what makes her skin crawl.
Okay, so ants can crawl all over and leave no trace. We really have no idea what their tiny ant feet have touched, but that's why they don't bother me as much. Mice leave fecal friends everywhere they go. Maybe I can't handle mice because they pooped on my pineapple.
That's a sight I cannot unsee.
I know there are worse things. There are, but those mouse turds were bigger than the ants that walk into our kitchen.
Bigger.
