Children's Stories
RATS
Deep under the town is a labyrinth of passages.
You start to go down by the old church.
If you went down to the bottom there lived a family of rats. Every day
the father and the older members would go up to the surface to find
food.
One day, when they were ready to go, the mother said: ‘Be careful.’ The
men from the town were getting ready to come and find them. One of the
men came down and fell. He could not get up to the top, he shouted but
he was not heard.
The rats heard him shouting and went to see what the noise was. They
told him not to be afraid, they only attack people if they attack them
first. So the man asked them if they would help him.
He asked them to pick one of them to go up to the surface to attract the
other men so they would follow down to where he was. The father rat said
he would go but some of them said: ‘No, you can’t go as you are the
elder.’ They picked the youngest because he was the fastest.
Off he started until he reached the top, all of a sudden the men spotted
him and started to chase him down and down until they reached the man.
The rat ran past him and the man shouted: ‘Thank you,’ to the rats who
were hiding in the labyrinths. The men carried him up to the surface and
to the hospital.
The rats were safe for sometime as the men did no more hunting until the
summertime.