How to Save Your Tail Read online

  “Well,” said the rat, “there were so many kids. Which one do you want to hear about?”

  “The biggest, fattest, juiciest one,” said Brutus, licking his chops.

  “That would be my great-granduncle Mustard. He took care of his little sisters, Bubbles and Squeak, who were both on the small side.”

  “You don’t say,” said Muffin.

  “I do say,” said the rat. “And poor Squeak had a gimpy leg.”

  “Just get on with it!” growled Brutus.

  “Okay, okay,” said Bob, and he began at the beginning, with the problems the three rats had finding a nice place to live.

  The Three Rats

  Once, in a rough neighborhood, my great-granduncle Mustard and my two great-grandaunties, Bubbles and Squeak, tried living in a house of straw. When a certain someone puffed and huffed it down, they tried living in a house of sticks. And when the same someone blew the sticks to smithereens, they built themselves a lovely three-bedroom, two-bath brick house with a cellar.

  No sooner did they build it than the very same neighbor, the Big Bad Wolf, to be exact, took a liking to the fancy brickwork and homey front stoop. And one fine day he showed up with his family.

  “This is Mrs. Wolf and our daughter, Elsie,” said Big Bad. “We’re moving in.”

  Elsie had foul breath and warts on her snout.

  “You’re not moving in!” said Mustard.

  “Not by the hair on our chinny-chin-chins,” said Bubbles.

  “We don’t have chins,” whispered Mustard.

  “Oh dear,” said Squeak.

  “Unpack our bags,” ordered Elsie. “Then make dinner.” A drip of slobber slid down her lip and off her chin.

  The rats gulped.

  “And don’t even think about running away,” said Big Bad. “Or you’ll be dinner.”

  “Yeah,” said Elsie. “I love rat salad and rat sandwiches and most of all I love rat pudding for dessert.” She stomped on Squeak’s tail just for fun.

  So, from that day forward, Mustard, Bubbles, and Squeak worked for the wolves and lived in the cellar. Every morning, Elsie pinched their ears to wake them. If the rats were too slow scrubbing the floor or weeding the garden or ironing her clothes, she made them pluck and roast their bird friends for supper. Squeak never did get over the heartbreak of cooking her best friend, Robin. Then, at night, after they washed the dishes, Elsie made them tell bedtime stories while she gnawed on bird bones and picked at her snout-warts.

  She was a lousy roommate.

  “I can’t take it anymore!” cried Squeak one morning after Elsie pinched their ears, their tails, and their toes.

  “We have to get rid of her,” agreed Mustard.

  “How?” asked Bubbles.

  “I’ve got it,” said Mustard. “We’ll tell everyone that Elsie is the cleverest maiden in the land. Surely someone will marry her and they’ll both move far, far away and we’ll never get pinched again.”

  So the rats went about the town, hiding behind fences, under tables, and in laundry baskets. They talked about Clever Elsie Wolf in their biggest voices, and the nosy townsfolk were only too happy to eavesdrop and pass along the gossip. Sure enough, before you could say “Hot cross buns,” word of Clever Elsie spread far and wide throughout the kingdom.

  By and by, a rich and powerful warthog paid a visit to discuss marriage. Elsie’s parents wanted to celebrate the wedding at once, but the warthog had a few questions.

  “What makes Elsie so clever?” he asked.

  Elsie’s parents looked at each other, baffled. For though they had heard the rumor of Elsie’s newfound cleverness and though they hoped it was true, they had not yet seen a shred of evidence that it was. They thought and thought but could not come up with a single instance of Elsie’s doing anything that wasn’t disgusting or mean or just plain dull.

  The three rats spoke up.

  “Well,” said Mustard, “she can see the wind before the storm.”

  “And she knew not to trust that little girl in the red hood,” added Bubbles and Squeak.

  “Are you saying,” queried the warthog, “that she can see the future?”

  “That’s it!” said Mustard.

  “Just so! Just so!” cried Bubbles and Squeak.

  “Ahhh,” said the warthog. “Well, I didn’t get rich and powerful by believing any old thing. I’ll need proof.” He turned to Elsie. “What do you see now, Miss Wolf?”

  Elsie squinted hard but spoke not a word.

  “Sometimes it takes a while,” said Mustard. “Have a seat.”

  The warthog sat down and Big Bad sent Elsie to the cellar for cider.

  The rats followed.

  “We must do something,” whispered Mustard.

  “But what?” asked Bubbles and Squeak.

  “I’m thinking,” said Mustard.

  Elsie ordered the rats to fill the pitcher and stepped on poor Squeak’s bad foot for good measure. Mustard scrambled up the side of a great wooden keg and opened the spout.

  “You know, Elsie,” said Mustard as cider poured into the pitcher, “if you marry the warthog, you might have a son.”

  “Yes,” said Bubbles. “He would be a fearsome creature indeed.”

  “Fangs, warts, and tusks!” squeaked Squeak.

  “That would be marvelous!” said Elsie.

  “But,” said Mustard, “what if … Oh, I cannot bear to think it!”

  “What if what?” asked Elsie.

  “No, no, I cannot say it!”

  “You must!” cried Elsie.

  “Yes, yes! You must!” said Bubbles and Squeak.

  “Well, okay,” said Mustard. “What if your son fetches cider one day for you and the warthog?”

  “He’s a dear boy,” said Elsie.

  “Yes, of course,” said Mustard. “But perhaps, while he’s down here, that shelf up there, which may have termites, falls down and … well … you know.”

  Elsie and Bubbles and Squeak all looked up. There on the shelf, smack-dab above them, were three big barrels, filled with apple cider. “Oh my,” said Elsie.

  “Oh dear oh dear oh dear!” added Bubbles and Squeak.

  “Yes,” said Mustard, “it would be terrible. Smashed warthog-wolf.” He began to sniff.

  Bubbles whimpered.

  Squeak moaned.

  Elsie howled.

  Upstairs, the wolves and the warthog got antsy. After a while Big Bad spoke up.

  “Wife,” he said, “go down to the cellar and see what that clever thing Elsie is doing.”

  Mrs. Wolf went down and found Elsie and the rats weeping by the cider keg. “What’s wrong, dear?” she asked.

  “I might marry the warthog,” said Elsie, “and have a fearsome son, and one day, the cider barrels will crush him to mush.” Then she sniveled herself into another fit of slobbery sobs.

  “You can foresee the future! Then you truly must be clever!” exclaimed Mrs. Wolf, delighted that Elsie had any talent at all. “But oh! My poor fearsome grandson—I cannot bear to lose him in such a wretched way!” And the mother wailed and lamented the tragedy along with her daughter.

  Upstairs, the warthog waxed impatient.

  “I’ll go myself,” said Big Bad, “and see what keeps them.”

  In the cellar, he found Mrs. Wolf and Elsie ankle deep in tears.

  The three rats huddled together on a dry box in the corner.

  When Big Bad asked what the problem was and Elsie started to explain, the rats saw their chance. They made a break for it.

  Mustard, Bubbles, and Squeak were halfway across the cellar when Big Bad spotted them.

  “Oh no you don’t!” he hollered.

  Elsie grabbed a shovel with the clever idea of bonking their little heads. Instead, she hit the shelf, which really did have termites. It crumbled and the barrels crashed down and rolled over one, two, three wolves, leaving them flat as pattycakes.

  “Oh well,” said the warthog, who saw the whole thing from the cellar door.
“That’s that.” He grabbed his hat and set off to look for another clever maiden.

  The three rats climbed the stairs, closed the cellar door behind them, and sealed it up with a new brick wall.

  After that, they moved back into their own bedrooms, made a small fortune as bricklayers specializing in fancy chimneys, and lived happily ever after.

  Cookie Break

  “Yuck,” groaned Muffin. “How do you get snout-warts, Mack?”

  “By being mean and evil,” said Bob, looking Brutus right in the eye.

  “Elsie should have eaten those rats while she had the chance,” said Brutus. “Like when they were telling stories.”

  Bob skittered under a lacy linen napkin and shivered.

  “Did the rats ever see the warthog again?” asked Muffin.

  “Yes,” said Bob, peeking out from beneath the napkin. “They built his chimney.”

  “Did the warthog ever get married?”

  “As a matter of fact, he married the three rats’ niece—my grandma Lois—but that’s another story.”

  “Wow!” said Muffin. “I want to hear all about it!”

  “I don’t think so,” said Brutus, preparing to pounce. “We had a deal, remember, Muffin? Stories first—we did that part—and now … a crunchy, chewy bedtime snack.”

  The rat piped up from under the napkin. “You did have a deal,” he said. “But you know, this particular story is about a deal. Too bad you won’t get to hear it.”

  “Please, Brutus?” purred Muffin. “Pretty please with tuna on top?”

  Brutus melted. “This better be good, Mack,” he said. His stomach growled. “Are there any more cookies?”

  So the rat gave each cat another cookie and some fresh milk and told them about Mustard, Squeak, and Bubbles’s niece, Lois, who knew what it meant to be hungry, how to work hard (sort of), and the joys of raising a family.

  The Chimney Troll

  Once upon a time, after her mother ran away with the circus, my stunning but starving grandma Lois wandered the countryside looking for a job. By and by, she came to a castle with a sign on the door:

  Now, Lois did not know whether she could spin a roomful of straw into gold, but she figured it was worth a try.

  She knocked on the castle door, introduced herself to the housekeeper, and followed her to a big room stuffed with straw. A spinning wheel topped by a golden spindle stood near the fireplace.

  “You must spin all of this into gold by tomorrow’s dawn,” said the housekeeper, “or die a grisly death.”

  “Land sakes,” worried Lois, once she was alone. “The sign didn’t say anything about death. And, and … this room is soooooo big!” She tried the door, but it was locked. She looked for a window, but the straw reached all the way to the ceiling. She thought about tunneling through the straw to find a mousehole, but she just didn’t have the strength. At last, she decided there was nothing for it but to begin spinning.

  Lois trod the wheel and drew a thread that was fine, smooth, and handsome. But it was not gold. Worse yet, by midnight she had spun only one small skein.

  “Oh, my pink nose and yellow teeth!” she cried. “I shall never spin the straw to gold by dawn and shall die a grisly death!” At this thought, she wept so bitterly that she didn’t notice the ugly little man who tumbled out of the fireplace.

  “Hey!” he shouted. “What’s with the racket?”

  Lois squealed in surprise. “Who are you?” she asked, horrified by his dirty hair, long arms, and unruly tail.

  “I’m the Castle Chimney Troll,” he said. “They call me Rumpelstiltskin. What’s the problem?” His red eyes squinted as if blinded by her stunning good looks.

  Lois could not know he was just plain nearsighted.

  “I said I could spin straw to gold so that I could become Queen, but I can’t spin it to gold at all, and if it’s not done by dawn I’m dead,” she said.

  “Not to worry, goodness no,” said the Troll. “I will spin the gold. But in return, you must promise that, after you marry the King, you will give me your firstborn child.”

  Lois had a good heart and did not want to give away her firstborn, but she realized that there would not be a firstborn if she was dead. So, being a practical creature, she said “Okay.”

  The Troll set to work at once and the whirr of the spinning wheel hummed Lois to sleep. When she woke, the first sunbeams sparkled through the window on piles and piles of spun gold. A note on the golden spindle read:

  “Remember your promise. Signed, Troll.”

  The housekeeper arrived a moment later. She clapped and chortled and pinched Lois’s whiskery cheek, which was rosy with relief. “It’s so lovely,” exclaimed the housekeeper, “not to have to plan another grisly death!” Then off she bustled to plan the wedding.

  The King turned out to be a warthog, but when they kissed at the ceremony he changed into a frog. Oh well, thought Lois, nobody’s perfect.

  In time, Lois gave birth, and joy filled the household. But that night, at the grand celebration, the Chimney Troll popped into the ballroom.

  “It’s time to complete our bargain, Your Majesty,” he said. “You owe me your firstborn.”

  Lois sobbed. The servants were distraught beyond words, and the Frog King was hopping mad.

  But the Troll said, “A deal is a deal.”

  And so, in the end, Lois, as true to her word as ever a rat was, gave him her firstborn.

  The Troll was so delighted with his prize—and so nearsighted—that he still did not notice that Lois was a rat and that her firstborn was a litter of thirteen baby rats. He took the basket and headed for the chimney.

  “But Mr. Troll,” said Lois, “a chimney is no place to raise a family.”

  “Don’t be silly,” said the Troll. “I’ve got a country place under the bridge by Billy Goat Hill. We’ll be most comfortable there.” And zip! He was up the chimney and out into the wide world.

  It was not until the Troll got home, warmed a bottle of milk, and lifted the blanket that he realized he had more babies than he had bargained for.

  The babies woke up, and since they had a little of their frog-dad in them, began croaking. And since the Troll had only two hands and the babies were always hungry, the croaking went on day and night. And since baby frog-rats are wiggly and hoppy, every time he tried to change one little diaper, the others wiggled or hopped away and the Troll was forever chasing them this way and that, under bridge and over hill.

  In no time, the babies grew and each asserted its own individual personality. One slurped his food. Another never flushed the toilet. Another left half-eaten sardines under the Troll’s bed. One put half-eaten chicken pot pie inside his pillowcase. One stuck chewing gum in the Troll’s hair while he napped. One threw up in his slippers. One blew bubbles in pea soup. Another thought this so funny, she laughed till she snorted the soup out her snout. One repeated everything the Troll said. One burped with her mouth open. Another chewed bugs with her mouth open. One even tied up the Troll with twine while another pulled out his long, gray whiskers, one at a time.

  They all jumped on the beds and left muddy pawprints everywhere and played rock-and-roll music and chewed the Troll’s shoes and scurried around on the bridge late at night going “Trip trap, trip trap” and crawled into his underpants—while he was wearing them.

  Finally, there came a day when the Troll decided he’d had one too many whiskers ripped from his face. He stuffed the rats in a sack and took them back to the castle.

  The Troll knocked on the door, and the housekeeper showed him in. She took him to the throne room.

  “I’ve brought your children back, Your Majesty,” the Troll said.

  “How thoughtful,” said Lois, “but no, thanks. We have enough already.” Just then, eighty-two baby frog-rats tumbled through the throne room, playing leapfrog with muddy paws. “After all,” she reminded him, “a deal is a deal.”

  And so the Troll had no choice but to throw the sack of babies over his h
unched back, turn on his hairy heel, and shuffle out of the castle with his tail between his legs.

  He was so frazzled, he began talking to himself on the way home.

  “Geeze, Rumple. You had a great life—wallowing in ashes, rummaging through garbage, picking on billy goats. Remember that? But you had to go and ruin it, didn’t you? ‘Let’s adopt!’ you said. Now look. Never a moment of peace. Rats croaking you up at the crack of dawn. Rats making you play hide-and-seek all the time, and you’re always It. Rats begging for a pet snail and you end up having to feed it. I don’t care if it is a cute snail. What were you thinking?”

  Just then, Griselda, the smallest rat of all, chewed a hole through the sack, crawled up onto the Troll’s shoulder, and hummed a little song.

  As she nuzzled next to his neck, the baby’s whiskers tickled the Troll’s big, hairy ear and melted his old Troll heart.

  “Maybe it’s not so bad after all,” he said, and decided then and there to make the best of things.

  And in time, the Troll learned to like rock and roll, shaved his whiskers, bought bigger underpants, and, along with his little family, lived happily ever after.

  Cookie Break

  “Please tell me that Rumple-what’s-his-name eventually got wise and ate the little boogers,” said Brutus.

  “Of course not,” said Bob. “One never eats one’s own family.”

  “I’m glad the Troll and the babies lived happily ever after,” said Muffin.

  “Well, actually, I exaggerated. It wasn’t ever after,” said the rat. “Only for a time. One day, the Troll married a dreadful shrew who nagged him to death. After that, all the children took off to make their fortunes—except my aunt Griselda and her ugly stepsister.”

  “Why did your aunt stay?”

  “Just too mousy, I guess,” said Bob.

  “Did she stay forever?” asked Muffin.

  “No,” said Bob. “You see, there was this fairy—but that’s another story.”

  “Oh, we have to hear this one,” said Muffin. “I love fairies!”

  “Another time, another place,” said Brutus. “Like in a half hour or so, from inside my stomach.” He squirted mustard on the rat’s head. “Come on, Mack, time to go … and I mean go! Pass the ketchup, Muffin.”