Wednesday, July 18, 2002

Tiny pooing mouse has been killed by ruthless game developer.
San Francisco, CA

Popeye is dead!

Good god. I thought the mouse traps were a joke. I thought they were just decorative conversation pieces. None of the mice seemed to be taking them seriously. I thought the mice would just gather around the traps at night and point, and laugh, and then stand up on their hind legs and do funny walks around and say, “Look at me! Look at me! I’m a game developer! Where’s my coffee! Who wants to play Quake?” Night after night, nothing would happen. None of them would die. The mice refused to place their little necks in the traps and press on the fake cheese to end it all. But then I got some deadly advice: I was told to put—get this—peanut butter on them.

And I thinking, even if I could catch the mice, and hold them down long enough to put peanut butter on them, what would that accomplish? Would it shame them? Would they just leave town because they felt stupid? Or is the goal to cover them with peanut butter so that dogs would smell the mice and come gobble them up like chewy Nutter Butter bars with tails?

So I decided to put the peanut butter on the traps instead. Chunky. Skippy. I had no idea how much mice loved Skippy. Well, I know one little mouse who will never enjoy a PB&J again. His body was found by our lead programmer, David Dixon, who foolishly THREW THE CORPSE AWAY, before I even had a chance to sell it on eBay as I had promised the fans I would.

Don’t worry, though. I’m sure there will be more mouse bodies piling up here to sell. The other three traps are still out there, like the sirens, ever beckoning Popeye to crash his boat upon their rocks.

Beware, plague-carrying mice. It is peanut butter jelly time for you, indeed.