Of mice and…coffee cups

Like many pharmacists, I enjoy a cup of coffee while working. Unlike many pharmacists, I prefer my coffee hot. Given the busyness of the dispensary, it is impossible to take more than a few steaming sips from a paper cup before either a) knocking it over on to the computer keyboard or b) having it cool into a tepid and revolting beverage that I will inevitably pour down the sink. So, I have invested in a couple of heavy duty, leak-proof stainless-steel mugs for work. One day, while walking home from the pharmacy with my purse in one hand and my weighty coffee mug in the other, I came across a woman who was walking up the sidewalk toward me carrying something in her hands as far away from her body as she possibly could. As I approached, my curiosity got the best of me and I asked her what she was carrying. It was a live trap, she informed me. I had never heard of such a thing, and on asking, I found that she had trapped a mouse in her house. As a nature-lover, she had not wanted to kill the rodent, but rather to move it from her house to another location. As it turns out, the other location was her neighbour’s yard, across and up the street. She was clearly distressed about the proximity of the trapped creature to herself, and so I offered to help. She rested the trap on her neighbour’s lawn and asked me to lift the lever to allow the mouse to escape. As she stepped (far) back, I lifted the gate as requested and a small black mouse hopped out. I stood up, feeling as though I had done my good deed for the day. As I stood, the aforementioned coffee cup, in all its heavy duty capacity, slipped from my hand and landed…on the mouse. The poor thing was beyond surviving, but not dead. And so I had to use the live trap to finish the job. We were both appalled. As I scurried away, the irony of what just occurred made me burst out laughing—and to this day it is one of the funniest things that has ever happened to me while in transit to work. One might assume that after this trauma, I would satisfy myself with lukewarm pharmacy coffee. I don’t. That heavy duty mug of all-day-hot coffee still accompanies me to work each day. The response to our reader "Write to Win" contest has been incredible! Thanks to all who have submitted stories, poems and blogs. We've enjoyed reading your entries so much that we're going to leave the contest open until February 28. Read about the contest and how to enter here.

Of mice and…coffee cups

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