Healthy Snack Boxes

There is something that happens when humans leave a place untouched. Nature reclaims that place, slowly but firmly. That’s what happened to our office space during the pandemic. The office manager and the healthy snack delivery man were the only two to enter the office for several months, and what they reported sounded like something out of a Disney movie. Bird nests in the healthy snack boxes, rabbits in the supply closet, wild dogs hindering healthy snack deliveries and at times even eating the supply. The office manager, Wendy, had worked out a sort of system to deal with this dilemma. She told us she would leave a healthy snack gift every morning as sacrifice for the the animals. This would usually get her on their good side for the day and lessen the loss of supply throughout the day. But eventually it seems that even that wasn’t enough. The animals grew more bold the longer that they held dominion over our office. It is a convenient thing that Wendy had a mask with her always because the smell had grown so unbearable. Even her daily offerings were no longer enough for the beasts. Long held griefs boiled within these animals, memories of their ancestors slaughtered for the sake of human industry running in their blood. At some point they must have had enough and seen Wendy as the cause of all their hardship, because about two months ago we lost all communication with her. It seems she may have been taken by the animals, to what ends we have no idea. Police searches have had no results, her home is empty without any evidence of her whereabouts. We are concerned for her, but now it is time for us to return to the office. Time to face the beasts.

What we see when we walk in is absolute chaos. Vines cover the walls. There is bird poop all over the healthy snack boxes for adults supply. Our whiteboard for healthy lunch box ideas for adults has been smeared, all of our good snack box ideas for adults forgotten. There’s some sort of metaphor there but I’m not about to figure it out, I’m just a simple snack box salesman. What was a real shock was the camera we saw in the corner of the office, it’s red light beeping. Who would have put that there? It must have been Wendy, thinking ahead in case she were to, I don’t know, be kidnapped by a legion of wild animals. What a year we have had indeed. So we all look around for any possible place where the camera feed may lead to. We find it in the bathroom, which is inexplicably covered in all varieties of animal feces, way more than any other room in the office. I mean, it’s explainable, the animals must have actually understood the purpose for the room. But how? These animals are smarter than we give them credit for. I wipe feces off the computer.

On the monitor we watch months worth of footage pass by in minutes. The highlights over the months include: a rabbit wrestling match inside one of the monthly snack subscription boxes, what seemed to be a mutiny within the ranks of the animals, and enough animal sex to make me want to throw my brain and eyes in a washing machine for a week. God, the things I have seen. The most important thing we saw, of course, was the fate of Wendy. One morning as she put her snack box gift at the feet of a particularly buff stork, the leader as evidenced by the previous mutiny, the stork did a little “finger across the neck” sign. How did it know that hand signal? After that a mob of animals pick Wendy up and pull her out of view of the camera. Then the stork points at our best merchandise and the animals take it all way, never to return. Some of us try to sit down and sign some customers up on a snack box subscription or two, but there’s just no way to focus. Wendy must be found, and our best snack subscription boxes must be retrieved.

We make an account of our best healthy snack subscription boxes, including our brand new healthy snack subscription box 2021 which the stork managed to take. It seems the animals took thousands of dollars worth of merchandise, not to mention Wendy, our loyal office manager. Someone notices a trail of dirt leading from the office downstairs, past the organic food subscription box room which was left completely untouched. The tracks lead all the way down to the basement. On the way down we are hindered by countless birds in the stairwell. It’s like Pompeii but with bird poop, not everyone survives the catastrophe. I emerge from the stairwell white as snow and gagging. Is Wendy worth this? Of course she is, but damn. I grab a mop and snap it in two, handing one jagged half of the handle to my buddy Tim. He, too, is covered, absolutely caked in bird turd. I hear a ruckus ahead, a cacophony of growls and barks and clopping hooves. Is there a horse in the basement of my workplace? I never thought I would ask that question. There is no time for doubt or fear, it’s been two months since Wendy was taken.

What Tim and I see when we step into the basement is something I will remember until I die. It will be what I see as my decrepit, aged mind slips away into the ether. Our healthy snack box ideas, the ones erased from the board, have been fulfilled in the most animalistic ways. Demented, poop-covered, all healthy lunch ideas turned to inspection day liabilities to say the least. I turn and tell Tim to turn back, save himself. But it’s too late, Tim is gone, twisted meal prep snack box ideas standing where he just was. Is this purgatory? Even the snack box ideas for school were made, but by who…by what? I have yet to see an animal, just a whole lot of poop. I trudge on, my shoes filled with bird turd. I think about my own personal snack box ideas gift box that I get every Christmas. It’s a nice thought. I keep my mind on that. But the screeching and barking is really messing with my nerves. I arrive at a door with a lock on it. How did that stork do all this? I bring the mop handle down on the lock.

A raccoon runs over my feet and I instinctually punt it across the basement. Dumb raccoon, go make some snack box ideas for toddlers or something. I keep my mind on my snack box delivery gift as I work the lock off the door and swing it open. Inside is pure, complete darkness. I make a clicking noise, a secret communicator I developed with Wendy during the last animal war of ’09. I hear the click return. She’s here. I scream out like a war cry, “Healthy snack box delivery!” and turn on my phone flashlight, charging straight into the dark. I run right into Don Storko and am slapped side to side up and down. A quick bloody dream of the perfect healthy snack box no subscription required and I wake up tied to a chair. I hear Wendy whimpering behind me. We are back to back, unable to move. I tell her in click-language that I’m going to get her out of here. She tells me in click-language that I have no idea what I threw myself into. Don Storko is a powerful beast with powerful friends. She says we’re talking like white house level powerful.

After a year-long series of hijinks in our nations capital, the contents of which time I am legally obligated to conceal, there was much battle between man and beast. We fought on the hill for Wendy, for our company, for healthy snack boxes for employees and for snack boxes for remote employees too. In the end we came to an accord with the animals. Maine was seceded from America and given to the animals, a healthy sweet box given to every animal involved as a symbol of peace. And so we returned to our office and cleaned it up. Wendy recovered from her dehydration, dysentery, and delirium. And we all happily went back to our regular lives of selling healthy snack boxes for work. But I would be lying if I said that was the end. Those memories…they have a way of resurfacing. On late nights when the world has already put so much on your plate and you just want to sleep so that tomorrow won’t be so hard. That’s when the bad times come rushing back. The age of Don Storko and his hench-animals. Oh well, I’ll save all this for the therapist I guess.