86 



THE RAT 



I don't quite know where to begin, now that 

 I have come to the really interesting traps. Per- 

 haps the very simplest of all will be the best to 

 take first. We rats have several peculiarities, of 

 which man has taken a most unfair advantage, 

 and one of these is the desire to run into a 

 hole. It is just as natural for us to run into 

 a hole as it is for you to go in at a door, perhaps 

 even more so ; for you do not naturally run into 

 every open door which you may happen to see, 

 while any hole seems to have an irresistible attrac- 

 tion for us. So what does man do but buy a big 

 jar, an enormous jar, big enough to hold about 

 twenty rats. When he first buys it it is probably 

 full of beer, or, if not, he soon fills it and soon 

 empties it, because he is fond of beer, and because 

 the smell of beer makes it all the more attractive 

 to us. Beer is made of malt, you know% and ' This 

 is the rat that ate the malt that lay in the house 

 that Jack built.' We also learn that poem, though 

 we generally leave out the verse about the cat, 

 because we do not consider it dignified to be killed 

 by a cat. W e go straight on — ' this is the dog that 

 killed the rat.' We say ' killed ' in poetry, because 

 many words which one would not use in daily con- 

 versation are considered to be quite polite in poetry. 



