A pity ’tis, but it is true,

The innocent must suffer too.

-Billy Mink.

The farmer who owned the big barn where the Rats had lived was puzzled. After a few days he became sure that there wasn’t a Rat left in the big barn. He knew that they had all moved over to the farmhouse. They had been bad enough when they had lived in the big barn, but they were ever so much worse living in the house. He knew that Rats did not move like this without a cause. This meant that they must have been driven out of the big barn, and who or what could have driven them out was more than the farmer could guess. For years he had tried to get rid of the Rats there and hadn’t been able to. Now suddenly they had deserted the big barn and taken possession of his house.

“I wish,” said the farmer, “I could find out what drove those Rats over here. Then perhaps I could use the same means to drive them out of the house.”

“I wish you could,” replied his wife. “I don’t know what we’re going to do. Those Rats are getting so bold that they don’t pay any attention to me at all. They run across the pantry floor in broad daylight. The only way I can keep food safe from them is in tin cans or earthen jars with covers, and they have even managed to get the covers off of some of these. They get in the flour barrel. They have spoiled the milk. They have stolen the eggs. In fact, there isn’t anything they haven’t gotten into. They keep me awake nights by their squealing and racing about through the walls. They’re getting so bold that I am afraid of them.”

So the farmer set all his traps. He set traps in the attic and in the pantry and in the woodshed. He put poisoned food where he was sure the Rats would find it. But it was all in vain. Those Rats had learned all about traps, and the gray old leader of them had learned to be suspicious of food left where it was easy to get. He warned the other Rats not to touch this food. The farmer blocked up the holes in the pantry walls, but as fast as he blocked them up, the Rats gnawed new ones.

So it was that the farmer and his wife were in despair. Do what they would, they couldn’t get rid of those Rats. The Rats got into the cellar and stole the vegetables. It got so the farmer’s wife didn’t dare go down cellar. She was afraid of being bitten by a Rat, and you know the bite of a Rat often is poisonous.