Don't Forget the Rat Poison, Honey

Last night at Trader Joe’s, I spotted a discarded grocery list on the ground in the parking lot. On a cheery piece of notepaper, in bright red pen, were scrawled the following items in a feminine script:

GROUND TURKEY

RAT POISON

That was it. Ground turkey and rat poison. This is funny on so many levels, and alarming as well. Was this shopper planning to put the rat poison into the ground turkey and feed it to her husband or some other unlucky soul for dinner? Was this shopper planning to set out a few rat traps while preparing some wholesome turkey burgers? If there are rats in this shopper’s home, then why would she be cooking/eating on the premises at all? Wouldn’t she want to purchase something neater—say, a box of crackers—that she could eat while locked safely in her car, away from the rats?

Furthermore, if you have a rat problem, do you really need to make a list to remind yourself to buy rat poison? Isn’t that something that would be at the forefront of your mind as you set out on a shopping trip? Wouldn’t you be more prone to forget, say, ground turkey, than you would be to forget RAT POISON? Does Trader Joe’s even sell rat poison?

And where, pray tell, does this woman live? The Trader Joe’s is located in one of the nicest parts of Sacramento. Maybe Sacramento is just a little more citylike than we’d thought.

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