Today wasn’t much for bike riding, to tell you the truth. I need to outfit the girl with enough baskets to carry home sixty student projects. Or stop assigning student projects. Regardless, I did get a chance to ride my bike to the bar to throw some darts with my good buddy N. On my way I stopped at my neighborhood grocery, the Breaux Mart on Magazine. I snapped a picture of this rat bait positioned outside the store, on Toledano. Part of me thinks that this is a bad sign if we are talking about store cleanliness. Does the grocery store have such a bad thing going that they need to line the streets with rat poison? Perhaps I should take this as a sign that the place isn’t sanitary. On the other hand, perhaps this is preventative, and I should feel my anxiety assuaged by their preemptive strike. The graffiti on the box tells me it’s been sitting here for some amount of time, leading me to think either the problem has been solved, or they’re falling down on the job. But this is New Orleans, and like any other city worth its salt, it’s got rats. Big deal. Ultimately I’m going to stop by Breaux Mart for candy on my way out fr the evening because I like my candy, rats be damned. We’ve got to learn to live together, I guess.
What I Saw Riding My Bike Around Today 
The most striking thing about this to me is the graffiti. Who tags rat bait?
They had rat traps in Barnes & Noble when I worked there. Rats live everywhere, like it or not.
Agreed that the graffiti on the cage is the most troubling aspect of the scenario. Hmmmmmmm, at a loss for words.
I have walked in the store and seen mice run from under one set of shelves to the other. And, have bought a bag of Doritoes for my daughter and had to return them because there was a hole in the bottom of the bag where a mouse had chewed through!! However I still go there because it is so convienent and because this is New Orleans and mice are everywhere. Even in the cleanest of homes!!
Yup, this is New Orleans. The only city with rats and mice.
This store will also boot your car if you take one step off the parking lot. They’ll blackmail you into paying $90.00. Even if you show them a bag of their groceries. I would never go to this store again