Screw You, Creditors

There was a rat, once, a plump and happy rat. Every night, when the sun had gone out of the sky, he could be found foraging the moonlit fields, looking for seeds to hoard and snails to suck out of their shells. The earth was rich and the crops were plentiful, and he returned to his nest each morning with his sack and his belly full. This continued for many years, and the rat was pleased.

"A hard-working rat is a happy rat," he said, as his larder overflowed. He invited the other forest creatures in to share the bounty, for what use is plenty when it does no-one any good?

Seasons passed, and the rat grew old and feeble, as all rats must do. A blight also came upon the land: the richness seeped from the soil, and wolves crept out of their native mountains to hunt the forest creatures. The rat still went out every night to pick over the blasted fields, but all the seeds were small and withered, and younger rats had eaten up the snails.

Although he ate but sparingly, and saved as much as he could, the rat's supplies dwindled steadily. The wolves came to eat from his larder, and he could not refuse them, for their teeth alone were as big as his head, and their claws put his own to shame. The other forest creatures offered the starving rat some of their seeds, but he could not accept these gifts, since he knew they would only vanish down the throats of wolves and be lost forever.

One day, as winter whitewashed the mountaintops, the rat found his storeroom empty. Filled with despair, he stuffed his sack with his dearest treasures: an old button, a bobbin with some red thread still clinging to it, a scrap of fabric embroidered with gleaming gold dragons, and a jar of polished appleseeds. He dragged these things to market, although his old bones protested, and sold them for what he could get. The button fetched five seeds, the bobbin ten, and the appleseeds twenty. But the scrap of cloth, his favourite prize of all, fetched only three, alas!

Nonetheless, his heart was light as he tied up his sack and set out for home. At long last, he would eat again as he had done before the drought. He could have a little fire in his burrow, and warm his arthritic old feet. He could go to bed sated, and awaken warm, and imagine, just for a while, that he'd see another spring.

As he walked, sack slung over his shoulder, a light snow began to fall. He looked up at the sky, and caught snowflakes on his nose. He thought about how softly winter's first snow always fell upon the forest, and how brightly shone the moon. He counted the stars in Orion's belt, and fancied he could see Jupiter. He passed beneath a tree, and remarked the pads of snow collecting in the forks of its branches.

When he looked down, still half-rapt in his reverie, he saw that a pack of wolves had emerged from the trees to surround him.

"Ho, there!" said the head wolf. "What's that sack you're carrying on your back?"

"Oh, 'tis only my summer coat, back from the cleaner's," said the rat, trembling in his bones.

"My nose calls you a liar," said the wolf, sniffing greedily.

"The rat has himself a bag of seeds," said another wolf, scratching his ear with his back foot.

The rat looked miserably at his feet.

"It's true," he sighed, opening the sack that the wolves might inspect its contents. "Thirty-eight seeds, the meagre proceeds of the sale of my estate. These seeds would hardly whet your appetite, but I could gorge on them for weeks. Please, good wolves, let me pass this time. It's been so long since I've eaten."

"Listen to this rat!", yelped an old granny wolf. "These rats always lie! Always one story and another!"

"She's right," said the scratching wolf. "Give it over, or we'll eat you instead."

So the rat forked over the seeds, and went home empty-handed. Instead of stuffing himself before a roaring fire, he staved off his hunger with a handful of old acorn shells and curled up in the ashes of a cold hearth. From the forest outside, the yelps of wolves drifted in to mock him in his dreams. Their yowly jeers followed his ghost up the chimney, as it fled his shriveled corpse. Their howls rose to the heavens to taunt him every night, as he took his place among the stars. As for the wolves themselves, they moved into his burrow and filled his cozy larder with cornhusks and the bones of the forest creatures.

Moral: Screw you, BC Health, Shaw Cable, Telus Incorporated, BC Hydro, eBay, and the Royal Bank of Canada, for taking all my money before I could get even one bite to eat. Screw you hard. Especially you, Royal Bank. $150 in interest? Die.