Day 635: 5 Minute Freewrite: Wednesday - Prompt: mouse droppings

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“Harry, please – I know its lunch time, but please – we're all about to lose our businesses! Please, Harry!”

This was the phone call from a high school friend to Captain H.F. Lee in Big Loft, VA, on a Tuesday, near lunch time, while he was preparing a big FOIA report release for his department (see parts one and two of “Black, White, and Red All Over”).

Captain Lee rarely went out and did field detective work as his cousin, Captain Hamilton of Tinyville, VA, was known for, but he knew his old friends didn't have the option he did to go back to the army if his homecoming did not work out. And so, lunch time before the worst evening of his new career (see part nine for that account), he went on out to Big Loft's North Side Mall, and its food court.

Five restaurants – a sub sandwich shop, a burger joint, a breakfast-all-day, a bakery, and a vegan restaurant – were all shut down and yellow-tagged by the county.

“They've searched them all top to bottom, every week for two weeks – we've passed every inspection, reopened, and then people have gotten sick again. We don't have the same kinds of food, the same suppliers, or anything – but it's all the same symptoms! We've thrown out and bought new dozens of times – it makes no difference, Harry! I'm at my wits end – this is half our food court!”

“Let me see your supply lists,” Captain Lee said, “all of them, along with the reports on the symptoms people have been experiencing.”

The huge mass of paperwork was brought, and the data master from Big Loft absorbed it all.

“You do have the same supplier – every one of you,” he said.

“But we don't use or sell the same products!”

“Yes, you do, out of exactly one supplier in Kansas.”

“What!”

“Wheat, John. All of you use large amounts of wheat, and your source of that wheat has a big problem.”

Captain Lee opened up his laptop and pulled up a news article.

“All of you are buying flour and baked goods connected with Sildale Wheat in Kansas, which two weeks ago had a very smart inspector who noticed something odd: one of the silos had ruptured, and the wheat was spilling out, but there were no mouse droppings anywhere around, nor had any of the grain been eaten.”

“That's a miracle!”

“No, I dare say it is not. Rat poison is exactly five percent poison, 95 percent good food. Any higher percentage of poison, and rats and mice won't eat it. Thus, if you have wheat lying around in the open undisturbed, and no mice or rat droppings nearby, you also have a pesticide spill that has badly contaminated that wheat. In Kansas, there was a recall, but Sildale Wheat knew some of that flour had been shipped out of state, and has been trying to track it all down.”

Captain Lee pointed up at the sign over the food court: “All food produced from products proudly made in America, mostly right here in Virginia.”

“They don't grow a lot of wheat here in Virginia,” he said, “but Virginia buys a lot of flour and wheat products from Kansas. Wheat is the only common element in all your foods, but supplied differently enough so that most inspectors here wouldn't think about the connection unless they knew about the recall.”

Captain Lee took out his phone and called the country inspector's office, and in another 20 minutes had that office on the right track.

“There will be a recall of all those products in the county,” he said. “Merely change your suppliers of all wheat-based foods, and add to your signage that you are not using any products connected with the recall, and your food court will bounce right back.”

“I knew you'd come through for us, Harry!”

“My pleasure, and honor, old friend.”

Photo Credit: Ricky Kharawala on Unsplash