La Cieca has to say that the funniest health code violation story she’s read in, well, days and days is the AP item entitled “NYC Health Department: Mice at Met Opera.” The hilarity begins in the very lede of the piece, which reads

On-stage villains aren’t the only vermin at the Metropolitan Opera.

Just as the headline promises, somewhere within the Met building were found mice or anyway “evidence of mice or live mice.” (La Cieca is not sure which of these possibilities is more likely to provoke her to behave like women standing on tables screaming in early sixties sitcoms.) Anyway, the final line of the story provides what is surely the most delicious double entrendre of the year so far:

The Met, which opened in 1966, also was penalized for using “unacceptable material.”