The Rat's Wedding

One rainy morning a sleek little rat, caught out in a downpour, dug himself a snug hole for shelter. And as he dug, what should he turn up but a fine dry root, just the thing for kindling a fire. “Aha!” said the rat, very pleased. “And to think, I found this all by my own cleverness.” He tucked it under his arm and set off.

Soon he passed a man struggling to light a damp fire while his children shivered. The kind-hearted rat gave him the dry root, and the grateful man gave him a little lump of dough in return. “A lump of dough for a dry root!” cried the rat. “See how I rise in the world, by my own cleverness!”

On he went, prouder by the step. He traded the dough to a potter and came away with a fine clay pot. He traded the pot to a herdsman and came away with a frisky young goat. He traded the goat to a wedding party short of beasts, and came away, if you please, riding upon a great fat buffalo.

By now the little rat’s pride had swelled up bigger than the buffalo itself. “Behold me!” he squeaked to everyone he passed. “I began this very morning with nothing, and now look! A buffalo, all my own, won entirely by my own marvellous cleverness! Was there ever such a rat as I?”

And when he came upon a grand wedding procession, all music and marigolds, the rat was far too important now to walk around it. Up he climbed, onto the very top of his buffalo’s head, so that everyone might see him riding by in his glory, and he threw out his little chest and lifted his little nose as high as it would go.

A touch too high, as it turned out. For the buffalo gave its head a shake, and the puffed-up little rat lost his balance, and tumbled head over tail off the top, splash, straight into a muddy roadside ditch. By the time he had spluttered his way out, the buffalo had ambled off after the wedding, and was quite gone.

And there sat the rat, exactly as he had begun the morning. A small, wet rat, with nothing at all. Only now he had something he had not had before, which was a very good idea of just how far a little too much boasting can make a fellow fall.