Costco Mascot

I went to Costco last week with my mom to get some contact lenses. After my exam, my mom and I went to the register to pay for the lenses. My mom started freaking out about something, staring at the ground, without telling me or pointing to anything. I soon realized why she was trying to be inconspicuous when I looked at the bottom of a shopping cart:

I guess no one really realized that we were fussing because we speak in Japanese to each other. Let's take a closer look (click for full, albeit camera phone, size):

There were some remarkable things about this rat--it looked quite real; it looked like it was alive not too long before appearing before the optical department in its form; and assuming it was alive, it was most certainly not a starved rat. Another angle:


Optical people started noticing, and we were still the only customers freaking out/laughing about this. They started calling employees in other departments, who would call other people, but no one would move the cart to the side, away from potential customer eyes. Maybe they were calling in for a coroner's report--how did it die like that??? My Agent Cooper skills tell me that it got stuck between two carts when someone corralled the carts up.