Bear with me a moment, and extend your imagination, please and thank you. I know, and you know that bare thread spools are inanimate, thus incapable of speech. But keep in mind, all good truth is based on a series of ridiculous lies, the more ridiculous, the larger the truth. The following is based on a true story, except for the part where the mouse speaks.

A mouse needed an interior makeover. His hole had become more hole than home, which brought him to Ikea®. It was apparent that everything in the Swedish store was too large and overpriced for… how do I say this? Shit crap.

After constant insistence from his Bohemian buddies, the mouse was obliged to give Ikea a shot. Truth was, he hated everything about Sweden, the chef, the fish, the meatballs and especially the people. He couldn’t place his finger on what exactly brought about this abhorrent feeling. All he knew was that the Swedish sucked serious ass. As racist as this may sound, he hated the North Koreans more, and was thankful they didn’t have a furniture store.

As the mouse exited, he heard a whisper. It was alluring. “Mouse… come here.” The voice was more feminine than all the Kardashians, especially Bruce Jenner dressed up like a woman.

The mouse replied, “Where are you?” There was no response.

The mouse wrinkled his nose trying to sniff out the sound. It’s a thing. Mice have an extraordinary sense of hearing and scent, because their nose and ears work in tandem. In this case, the nose acted as an amplifier for the ears.

It was a bare thread spool. The mouse felt duped. He felt like a Greek sailor lured and shipwrecked in the reefs by an unsightly siren. The mouse hocked up a large loogie out of sheer disgust.

The spool lullabied, “Make me your centerpiece and they will come.”

The mouse stepped back and smiled, eyeing the spool up and down. He imagined two steaming plates of rotten food atop grains of rice. The mouse decided then and there, that he had to have this spool. He reached forward to lift it, and that’s when things went koo koo haywire. There was an adhesive on the spool that made it impossible for the mouse to release it. He was trapped. He looked up and realized that something horrible was transpiring. This is what he saw.

After lots of clicking, whirring of plastic, and swirling balls, a cage fell on the mouse and the spool. The odds of the mouse surviving through the night were very slim. He gulped audibly.

MORAL: Look a gift horse in the mouth or Ikea® is a bad place to die.