“Four… Three… Two… One… Ready or not. Here I come.”
It was another instance of hide-and-seek, a game children like to play the world over. But children are not the only ones. Rats, too, enjoy it. Even adult brown rats – sometimes known as common rats or Norway rats – such as Ed, Fred, Brutus, and Rattus. They were in an alleyway somewhere northeast of Philadelphia that Wednesday morning. Rattus was ‘It”. He took his paws away from his beady eyes and blinked in the filthy dimness by the dumpster.
Where were they? Certainly not in the street with all the busy, human, pedestrian traffic. After an hour of investigating each dark shadow, empty can, and discarded Styrofoam cup, Rattus was still alone.
“Ed? Fred?” His plaintive words seemed to echo in the dead-end alley.
Rats are social animals, so nothing is worse for them than to be alone.
Had the others gone underground? Were they with the dirty sewer rats?
“Ed? Fred?”
Where they in some cheap restaurant kitchen? Or a pawn shop basement, cowering by a damp wall?
Had the three finally abandoned him? Ed and Fred, perhaps.
“And you, too, Brutus?”
David Sydney is a physician. He writes fiction in and out of the EHR (Electronic Health Record).