THE RATS START A FIRE
A tiny spark, once it is free,
An awful thing may grow to be.
_Billy Mink._
Rats are born thieves. They not only steal food, but they carry off many
other things, things for which they really have no use at all. Now it
happened that one of the young Rats in the farmhouse found some matches
and took them to his nest under the floor of the shed. There, having
nothing else to do, he nibbled at them to see what the queer stuff on
the ends of them might be. His sharp teeth caused one of them to light,
and of course that instantly lighted all the rest of them. With a squeak
of fright the Rat ran away, for like all the little people of the Green
Forest and the Green Meadows, a Rat fears the Red Terror, which we call
fire, more than anything else.
Now that Rat’s nest was made chiefly of chewed-up paper and old rags.
Nothing could have been better for the Red Terror. It blazed up
instantly. The floor just above was of very, very dry wood, for the
boards of that floor had been there many years. In no time at all that
shed was afire.
All the Rats under the floor fled in terror into the house. Smoke began
to pour out of the open door of the shed. The farmer at work in the
barnyard saw it and ran as fast as he could to try to put the fire out.
For a while the farmer and his wife had a hard fight with the Red
Terror. They pumped water as fast as ever they could and carried it in
pails to throw on the fire. At first it looked as if the Red Terror
would be too much for them and their house would be burned up, but after
a while the water was too much for the Red Terror and drowned it out.
“Whew!” exclaimed the farmer, as he and his wife sat down to rest for a
moment. “That was a narrow escape. How under the sun could that fire
have started?”
“I haven’t the least idea,” replied his wife. “I was upstairs at the
time. There wasn’t a thing in that shed which could have started it. Do
you suppose that anybody could have set it?”
The farmer shook his head. “No,” said he, “that fire started under the
floor.” Then a sudden thought came to him. “I know how it started!” he
cried angrily. “It was those pesky Rats. It was those pesky Rats, as
sure as I live. They must have found some matches somewhere and taken
them to a nest under the floor. Then, while they were nibbling at them,
they set one going. We’ve got to get rid of those Rats or we won’t have
a house left over our heads. I don’t know how we’re going to do it, but
we’ve got to get rid of those Rats.”