An Innocent Trip to the Store

Two days ago, around midnight, my sister and I were bored and I wanted a bag of chips so we decided to go to the gas station right around the corner from me.

Once in there, my sister went to the coolers to get a drink and I went to the chips aisle. After getting the chips I wanted, I headed up to the register to pay for them. As I was walking up to the registers, I saw a mouse come crawling out of the candy, go up to the registers, run along the ledge and disappear behind the counter. Oh, and it was also carrying a big blue gumball in its mouth.

I stood there watching in shock, not sure what to do. I quickly turned around and headed back towards my sister and told her. She immediately started to bolt out of the store (as she is deathly afraid of mice and raccoons) but not before she stopped and considered the fact that I might be lying to her. So to prove I wasn't lying, she made me go tell the cashiers what I saw.

"Um, excuse me," I said to the lady at the counter. "I just saw a mouse run behind your register there."

The woman looked at me and started chuckling. "Oh, you must have seen Stewart," she said, still smiling.

"Stewart? Is that somebody's pet?" I had seriously thought for a second that they kept a pet mouse there. If so, I could safely get rid of the heebie-jeebies I was feeling. Actually, I wanted to throw my bag of chips at the cashier's face and run out of the store in case the mouse decided to run over my feet or something.

"Yeah, that's Stewart. He's been around here for awhile."

"Oh, well he had a blue gumball in his mouth," I informed her.

She started laughing again. "HEY JENNY! THIS GIRL FOUND STEWART!" she yelled.

Just then a cashier came from the back of the store carrying deli sandwiches. "You did? Where is he?" she said as she looked around.

"He ran over behind the registers," I pointed to the area.

"Oh good, maybe he'll go into the trap over there." I was hoping she'd set down the deli sandwiches, but she didn't, and started looking over at the area I had pointed to.

"He was also carrying a blue gumball in his mouth," I repeated, desperate to know why a mouse had taken a gumball.

"Oh that wasn't a gumball. Stewart likes coconut M+M's," she proudly informed me. So that explained why I had seen "Stewart" run across the candy. He was chewing through the bags to get to the M+Ms.

I was so grossed out that I bought my chips and we left. It was probably out of shock that I shoved all the chips into my mouth as soon as we got into the car and started munching on them. (At least I checked to make sure there were no mouse holes in my bag before I ate them).

I have a few problems with this:

1. They were LAUGHING about it. If we had a mouse problem in my store and a customer had seen one and told me about it, I would pretend that I had never heard of a mouse in our store and I would act shocked and/or disgusted. I would also apologize profusely and promise we would take care of it ASAP.

2. I would not name it.

3. I would put a coconut M+M in the mousetrap in order to catch the damn thing faster.

4. What if a customer bought a bag of M+Ms that happened to have mouse poop in it? They would think they were eating a chocolately M+M!

5. I would definitely not fucking name it. And if I did, I wouldn't tell customers about it.

In conclusion, I will never be back to that store because that seriously grossed me out. I mean, problems can happen with mice and other rodents, but I think it was the way they handled it with me that made me want to never go back there again. How would they like to wake up to a "Stewart" in their cereal bowl?