Disclaimer: Any resemblances here to real people, places, institutions or events are purely coincidental. This is somewhat a work of fiction.

One of the nice things as a rat is that you don't have a time clock and you are accountable to no one. This allows you to wander around, basically pursuing sources of food or rats of the opposite sex. Kind of carefree, you might say.

I noticed that in the administration building there was a secretarial pool. That's what the Big Things called it. It was a group of Big Things that prepared paperwork for the entire mill. There were no administrative assistants anywhere else (this was back in the days before the internet and personal computers--Jim).

There was a lead person in this group, and she was responsible for taking care of the admin tasks for the whole mill--she would assign each task to Big Things in her group. By and by, the engineering department, which was physically a long way from the administration building, was assigned a very large project. They needed some administrative and clerical help at their location for the duration of the project. The lead of the administration group decided her young niece, just out of school, would be a good fit for this assignment.

Now, about the same time, I noticed this administrative group got all the good food. Meetings would be held in the administration building and leftover food would be scarfed up by the Big Things in the pool. I noticed that they started taking some home with them--maybe a pie, a cake, or some sandwiches.

One day, when no one was noticing, I jumped in the admin leader's BTI (you may remember from early episodes this is what the rats called cars, trucks, and so forth--Jim). She seemed to always take the most food and I thought she might leave some crumbs in the BTI that I could eat.

No one noticed me. So, at the end of the day, there was the admin leader, her male partner (who also worked at the mill) and her niece, who rode with them to work. I got so I made this trip quite often, for they were all very sloppy and left food around in the BTI. I would just wait in the BTI in the dark, and sure enough, the next light we would go back to the mill.

I got in the habit of doing this. The BTI would be parked at the house of the admin leader and her male, and we would go in the morning and pick up the niece. It was a routine.

Then one morning the male came by himself, I think the admin leader must have been sick. Let me tell you, she was soon going to be a lot sicker. The male picked up the niece and headed to work. They sat really close together. I mean, as a rat, we trade partners all the time, but I thought the Big Things usually stayed with one partner. This was ridiculous.

This must have happened more than once when I was not around, for the next thing you know, the admin leader is gone and now I am just riding back and forth to the mill with the male and the niece, who don't bother to live in separate houses any longer. Don't know what happened to the admin leader. Looks like her good deed was poorly repaid.