Read Online The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents by Terry Pratchett - Free Book Online

day—” Malicia continued, but Maurice was listening even less than he had been before.
    It would have to be Sardines, he thought. Idiot! He always goes ahead of the Trap Squad! Of all the kitchens in all the town he could turn up in, he’s turned up in this one. Any minute she’s going to turn around and scream.
    Sardines would probably treat it as applause, too. He lived life as if it was a performance. Other rats just ran around squeaking and messing up things, and that was quite good enough to convince humans there was a plague. But, oh, no, Sardines always had to go further. Sardines and his yowoorll song and dance act!
    â€œâ€”and the rats take everything,” Malicia was saying. “What they don’t take, they spoil. It’s been terrible! We have to buy corn and stuff from the traders who sail up the river. That’s why bread is so expensive.”
    â€œExpensive, eh?” said Maurice.
    â€œWe’ve tried traps and dogs and cats and poison, and still the rats keep coming,” said the girl. “They’ve learned to be really sneaky, too. They hardly ever end up in our traps anymore. What’s the good of the rat catchers offering us fifty cents a tail if the rats are so cunning? The rat catchers have to use all kinds of tricks to get them, they say.” Behind her, Sardines looked carefully around the room and then signaled to the rats in the ceiling to pull the rope up.
    â€œDon’t you think this would be a good time to go away !” said Maurice.
    â€œWhy are you making faces like that?” asked Malicia, staring at him.
    â€œOh…well, you know that kind of cat that grins all the time? Heard of that? Well, I’m the kind that makes, you know, weird faces,” said Maurice desperately. “And sometimes I just burst out and say things get away get away see, I did it again. It is an affliction. I probably need counseling oh no don’t do that this is not the time to do that whoops, there I go again…”
    Sardines had pulled his straw hat out of his knapsack and was holding a small walking stick.
    It was a good routine, even Maurice had to admit. Some towns had advertised for a rat piper the very first time he’d done it. People could tolerate rats in the cream, and rats in the roof, and rats in the teapot, but they drew the line at tap dancing. If you saw tap-dancing rats, you were in big trouble. Maurice had reckoned that if only the rats could play an accordion as well, they could do two towns a day.
    He’d stared for too long. Malicia turned and her mouth opened in shock and horror as Sardines went into his routine. The cat saw her hand reach out for a pan that was on the table. She threw it, very accurately.
    But Sardines was a good pot dodger. The rats were used to having things thrown at them. He was already running when the pan was halfwayacross the room, and then he leaped onto the chair and then he jumped onto the floor and then he dodged behind the cupboard and then there was a sharp, final, metallic… snap .
    â€œHah!” said Malicia, and Maurice and Keith stared at the cupboard. “That’s one rat less, at any rate. I really hate them—”
    â€œIt was Sardines,” said Keith.
    â€œNo, it was definitely a rat,” said Malicia. “Sardines hardly ever invade a kitchen. I expect you’re thinking about the plague of lobsters over in—”
    â€œHe just called himself Sardines because he saw the name on a rusty old tin and thought it sounded stylish,” said Maurice. He wondered if he dared look behind the cupboard.
    â€œHe was a good rat,” said Keith. “He used to steal books for me when they were teaching me to read.”
    â€œExcuse me, are you mad?” said Malicia. “It was a rat . The only good rat is a dead rat!”
    â€œHello?” said a little voice.
    It came from behind the cupboard.
    â€œIt can’t be alive! It’s a huge