Healthy Snack Box

I have always told Hugo he can’t be leaving snacks hidden around the office. I suggested some healthy lunch ideas, maybe a healthy lunch box he could fit in the refrigerator, maybe even order some healthy snack box delivery. But says it’s perfect because no matter where he is, he’s hungry, so he ought to have snacks everywhere. It makes sense in theory, but in execution this plan results in a week long fumigation and pest control fiasco due to the countless bugs, rats and birds who have made our office their home. So now Cynthia, our boss, has told us we will be working from her back yard for the week. Hugo nearly faints at the idea of working in the sun but Cynthia gives him a healthy snack gift to abate him for now. I actually like the idea. I get a chance to work on my tan and there is a 120% chance I will be better able to slack off in this setting. If nothing else I will fake heat exhaustion to get out of work, I have done far worse. After all, we really need this pest problem fixed. I have been splitting lunch for weeks with this family of falcons who nested in the ceiling tiles over my desk. It was cute for like a day, I felt like I was in a Disney movie, but the mother falcon just keeps taking more and more every time. Yesterday I had one potato chip and a new claw attack on my hand. My hands are covered in band-aids and I can barely even type or hold a pencil. That damn mama falcon. I named her Bernice at first and earned a beak-ing to the temple, so now she goes by Swift Strike 5000.

Cynthia’s back yard was more like a clearing in a forest. It was huge. It was beautiful. But it was miles deep in the woods, definitely too far away for any healthy snack deliveries for Hugo. I am tasked by Cynthia with keeping an eye on Hugo and coming up with some healthy snack box ideas from the contents of her kitchen. It’s better than working I guess. But then she comes in and tells me I have to come up with healthy snack boxes for employees one and all. That sounds like a lot of work to come up with healthy lunch box ideas for adults, and I can’t even work on my tan inside. But I get to work putting together whatever I can find. Pickles, ice cream, pita bread, jelly beans, cantaloupe…the works. I step out to get Hugo his first lunch when I realize he isn’t at his desk. Uh oh. I was tasked with watching him. I ask around to see if anyone knows where he is but no one even noticed he wasn’t at his desk. I look out into the woods and see a figure looking back at me. Who is that?

I set out the healthy packed lunch ideas for work and leave them to the masses. While they eat those healthy snack boxes for adults I dip into the woods for a quick look around. Something sinister stirs in these shadows and I don’t feel safe. To keep my mind focused and calm I simply recount the best healthy snack subscription boxes I know, think about all the healthy packed lunch ideas for work that I’ll give Hugo once I find him safe and sound. I end up at the top of a ridge overlooking a lake, a steep grassy slope leading down to the lake. In the grass is a Hugo sized indentation, as if he may have rolled his way down the whole thing. Now I know Hugo, he doesn’t get down and roll unless he is fleeing from something, otherwise the exertion to get to the ground is just not worth it. On the flip side, he does roll if he is attacking as well. So, is Hugo the hunter or the hunted? And who, or what, is this adversary he has crossed paths with? I run back to the “office” in order to gather more eyes.

Back at the office everyone is working diligently and they are confused to see me emerge from the woods covered in dirt and foliage. They look at me like I’m crazed. I tell them to put down the customizable snack box I made for each of them, Hugo needs our help. They look over at Hugo’s empty desk and shrug as a signal of realization that he is missing. No one seems to want to move. They would rather continue working than help Hugo. I can’t believe my eyes. I offer them each a healthy snack box no subscription deal if they help. They all spring to action and I know in the back of my mind that there is just no way I am going to be able to follow through on that. Oh well, I’ll cross that bridge when I get there. For now, we must find Hugo! The sun is falling and we are losing time. Hugo could be hanging unconscious from some trap in a tree, waiting to have his organs harvested by aliens. Or he could just be lost. Either way, Hugo is part of the family and we owe it to him to help.

Into the jungle we march, torches made from Cynthia’s bed frame in hand. She isn’t happy about that but in the end that’s kind of Hugo’s fault, right? I give her a healthy sweet box to satisfy her anger for now. Nothing like a good snack box ideas gift to keep the wolves at bay. Anyway, there’s twenty of us looking through the woods calling out for dear Hugo. In the hole of a tree I find a nature box shampoo that I know from previous encounters that Hugo keeps on him at all times to keep his ponytail moisturized. It is stabbed through the center and oozing out. I go back to thinking about snack box ideas for adults to keep my mind at ease. We get back to the lake and I show them all the dent in the grass and they all agree only Hugo could have done that. So we all roll down the hill, trying to get in the mind of the Hugo. Once we are at the beach of the lake Hugo’s shoes are found right at the shoreline. We look at each other, considering the worst. Then I finally look across the lake.

Out across the lake is Hugo. Tanning in the sun. Not a care in the world. Next to him is what appears to be two pizza boxes. He obviously had not considered having low calorie snack delivered. We run around the lake to him and ask him what the hell he has been up to. “You’re looking at it,” he says. Next to him is the healthy snack subscription box 2021 which I had prepared for everyone, meaning he came back to camp and then disappeared with the snack box subscription box without anyone noticing. Sneaky, nimble, there seems to be more to Hugo than meets the eye. I tell him we have been worried sick looking for him, then I ask him how he got pizza delivered all the way out here. “I know a guy,” he says. Everyone is a bit pissed off at Hugo. It’s past time they should all be home and he doesn’t even care that they are out searching for him. I am pretty sure at some point during the chewing out portion that Hugo fell asleep behind those sunglasses. I have to admit it, I am impressed with how little this man cares.

Thirty-five years later I get a letter from Hugo. He’s on his death bed and he needs to speak to me before the end. Since that fateful day I transitioned to a career in the best snack subscription boxes east of the Mississippi River. Specifically snack box ideas for toddlers. I have sent Hugo monthly snack subscription boxes ever since as a sort of inside joke between us. About five years in Hugo had sent me a letter telling me never to send him another organic food subscription box, so from then on I stuck to the sweets. Well I’m walking into the hospital. Surrounding him is a family who look eerily similar to Hugo. His wife, Hugette, leads the family out of the room so that we may speak privately. I ask him if he ever learned to not leave snacks all over the place. He looks me dead in the eyes, “You still don’t understand, do you? The plan was always to get the office fumigated.” I don’t understand at all. “Without those rats you would have never become a snack box aficionado…and I never would have…had that beach day…” Those were his last words.