Young rats are really pretty creatures. These little ones had white breasts, pink paws, shell-like, whitish ears, black whiskers, and bright, black eyes. They slept all day in a brown box at the top of their big cage. This box looked something like a pulpit, and, if roused, they would lean over their pulpit, holding on by their pink paws, their beady eyes seeming to say, “What do you want? We don’t like to play till night comes.”
One day one of them became ill, and lay under the straw at the bottom of the cage for some time. It was almost human to see the way in which he would stretch one little pink paw from under the straw, and feebly move it to and fro.
When these young rats were partly grown, we caught two tiny ones and put in with them. The new-comers were very anxious to get up in the brown box, and tried climbing up hand over hand, or rather paw over paw toward it. The big ones amused themselves by leaning out of the box and pushing them down. I gave the little ones a tangle of wool to sleep in on the bottom of the cage, and two or three days later the older ones relented, and allowed them to climb up to sleep in the box.
It seemed to me particularly appropriate that my father, who is a doctor of divinity, should take an interest in the training of these young rats. So I was amused when he proposed to give them a whirligig. This wheel was put in the cage, and soon my father had his rat students so trained that when he struck the cage sharply, and said, “Come, boys!” one of them would spring from the pulpit, his little feet flying, his black eyes excited, and his whole appearance apparently denoting his appreciation of the amusement of his spectators in his mechanical performance, though I finally concluded that the intelligent creature was supremely bored by it.
After a time one of these young rats managed in some way or other to squeeze himself out of the cage. I did not concern myself greatly about it. I intended to give every one of them their freedom some day, but I was sorry for his evident loneliness, and amused beyond description to see him one day trying to insinuate himself back into the cage.
He spent the most of the time on the top of the cage, but sometimes ran about the aviary with the guineapigs and birds, and always squealed loudly with delight when I entered with fresh food.
Whether he incited the others to escape from their cage or not, I did not know; but one day I said to my father that his rats were very quiet, and had not been eating much, also that only one performer came out, and went round and round on his wheel, stopping occasionally and holding on to the bars with his pink feet as if to say, “Where are my brothers?”
I examined his cage, and found only three young ones in it; the other four were running loose in the aviary, probably to the great delight of the former solitary young one.
The other three soon got out, and now I had seven rats frisking to and fro over the earth floor of the aviary. They had a delightful time, stealing newspapers and straw from the guineapigs’ barrels. They made a nice large nest in a hole in the earth, and for a time were model rats.
