WHERE THE RATS WERE
The mischievous will find some day
That for their mischief they must pay.
_Billy Mink._
If Billy Mink didn’t know where the Rats who had left the big barn had
gone to, the farmer who owned the big barn and the henhouse and the
woodpile knew. Yes, indeed, the farmer and his family knew just where
those Rats were. They were in the farmhouse!
You see, the wise, gray old leader of the Rats knew that the safest
place for them was in that farmhouse. In the first place it was big, and
that meant that there was plenty of room with ever and ever so many
hiding-places. There was food there, plenty of it, to be stolen. They
could be very comfortable in that farmhouse. More than this, they would
be safe from Billy Mink. That gray old leader knew that Billy Mink would
hesitate a long time about actually entering the house, because of his
fear of man. He didn’t believe that Billy would dream of looking for
them in that house, especially if he couldn’t track them over there.
This Billy couldn’t do, as the wise old leader very well knew, because
it had been snowing when the Rats left the big barn, and the falling
snow had covered their tracks and destroyed the scent.
So, while Billy Mink was looking under the woodpile and in the henhouse
for those Rats, they were making themselves very much at home in the
farmhouse. They could climb about between the walls and go where they
pleased. The first thing to do was to make homes for the babies. It
didn’t take some of those Rats long to find the way to the attic. Now
the attic was filled with trunks and boxes and papers and all sorts of
odds and ends. It was just such a place as Rats love. Right away the
mother Rats began to tear up papers and make rags of clothing that hung
in the attic. Rags and paper make the finest kind of a nest for a Rat.
These nests they hid in dark places behind boxes and trunks.
And while they were busy with this, the father Rats set out to search
for food. It didn’t take them long to find the pantry and gnaw holes
through the wall into it. And they were not quiet about their work,
either. The farmer and the farmer’s wife knew what was going on. They
could hear the scamper of little feet across the attic floor and faint
squeaks.
“Gracious!” exclaimed the farmer. “I should think all the Rats in the
barn had moved over here.” He little guessed how exactly he had hit on
the truth.