Soap: 99.44 percent deadly (or "Deadly yes, but I like it too")

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

I was cleaning under a sink in my garage when, to my horror, I discovered a veritable killing ground --three mice of various sizes, long dead and pretty much mummified. They were curled into a fetal position around a old bar of soap that, judging by the toothmarks and crumbs, they’d been nibbling at at time of death.

This raises a few questions…

(A) What the heck could be so deadly about a bar of soap?
(B) After the first two mice kicked, did the third mouse think to him/herself “Well then, all the more for me!”?
© Was there really nothing more appealing to eat in my house than an old bar of soap?

Actually, the answer to that last question is a shameful “Yes”. At the moment my larder consists of five beers, a jar of spicy mustard, a half container of pork fried rice and a can of Vegimite I brought back from a trip to Queensland (hmmm, that soaps looking better and better).

Any ideas? The ingredients from the back of my current soap don’t offer any obvious clues, and a quickie internet search hasn’t given me much to work from.

I should mention that the soap in question is “The Masters Artists Hand Soap”, spearmint scented and rather like “Lava” only with walnut hulls mixed in as the abrasive.

2

Well, unless you were hoping to eat it yourself, I would think you’d be happy to discover a new way to rid yourself of those pesky rodents. I wouldn’t worry about it if I were you. However, if you find yourself craving soap, don’t give in to temptation.

Those mice did NOT die in vain. (They died in your garage.)

~~Baloo

3

Lieutenant Columbo paced the carpet, squinting, pausing only to admire an item on the mantelpiece.

Columbo: This is very nice statuette. You know, my wife collects figurines too, clowns and angels mostly. What is this?

Inky: It’s a Mister Potato Head. You said there had been a break in the case?

Columbo: So I did. Now, it’s your contention that these mice, discouraged by the meager pickings in the house, resorted to eating this soap for it’s sweet glycerin taste, only to be inadvertently poisoned by the lye the soap was processed with.

Inky: That’s right, my search of the internet showed that some soaps, mostly industrial strength ones, use lye, a poisonous chemical also used in oven cleaners.

Columbo: That’s a good theory, and that’s what the boys in forensics thought also, but acting on a hunch I had the stomach contents analyzed, you know what I found?

Inky: I have no Idea…

Columbo removes a notepad from his crumpled overcoat.

Columbo: Well, I’ll tell 'ya. Cleansing cream. 99.44 percent pure cleansing cream, free of greasy residue and an april fresh scent as well. but no lye. Sure these mice ate soap for their last meal, but it was hypoallergenic soap,

Inky (nervously): Er, what are you suggesting Lieutenant?

WAVY FADE-OUT TO DINING ROOM - NIGHT

Columbo (narrating over flashback scene): I think you invited these three mice to dinner, and served them a wonderful meal of top-of-the-line grade-A soap…

Inky, dressed in a sport coat and black turtleneck sweater (ala. a 70’s detective show villain) places an ornate silver platter on a formally set candlelit table. The mice scurry about randomly. He removes the platter lid with a flourish, revealing a large pile of soap bars on a bed of lettus.

Columbo: Then, after dinner you all retired to the living room for cigars and cognac…

Inky makes idle conversation, a snifter of brandy in hand. Camera pans down to a table where the three mice scurry around the stems of the way too large snifters, preening whiskers.

Columbo: But of coarse you’d coated the glasses beforehand with narcoloxin, a powerful sedative…

Inky, eyes shifty, wearing black leather driving gloves, coats the brandy snifters with an eyedropper from a bottle with a big cartoony skull and cross bones on the label.

SCENE CUTS TO CRIME SCENE

Three little chalk body outlines surround the half eaten soap. Credits roll…

A Quinn Martin production!

4

wild applause
Bravo, Bravo!!

5

The formula for soap is fat and lye.
One to bring in the mice, the other to kill it.
Cleaning is an afterthought.

6

And one ring to bind them all.

7

Walnut shell bits are abrasive and can have sharp edges. Perhaps the critters died of internal bleeding… I can’t think of anything else.

8

I think it’s plausible that you have a mouse mob hit on your hands. The little bastards are taking over, see? I bet those three were trying to skim a little off the top of that bar and got found out.

Hey, it could happen.

dewt