So here I am — on a perfectly normal Saturday — trying to fish a rogue LEGO

out from under a decrepit shelf (and yes, I still step on them).

I looked over and there was this thing in the dusty shadows. Lumpy.

Sticky-looking. Kinda… crunchy? My initial thought: Nice, a dead mouse. But to my surprise, it was Old Floam.

Because that is just what you want to deal with before coffee.

I prodded it with the end of a pencil (standard procedure) and it didn’t budge.

Thank God. But it also didn’t really resemble something living. It was this strange,

lumpy mass with what looked like tiny seeds or beads pasted all over it. Part moldy,

part mystery. I half-expected to see a note from a raccoon that read, “Thanks for the snack storage.”

But no — after about 30 seconds of bewilderment and one sniff of something sort of plasticky, I knew.