The day started like any other day. I woke up, shuddering in the cold as usual because, being the runt of the litter, my siblings made me sleep on the outer ring of the body heat circle. Tired and jarred awake early by the brisk morning air, I scampered over to the quartermaster to be given my orders for the day, which of course would involve gathering food. As I sat waited for him to show up, I heard the other rats betting on me, like they did every day, on whether or not this would be the day I died, my body given to the dirt. We weren’t an overly affectionate people, being a short-lived race, usually shorter lived because predators killed most of us before we became adults, usually around the six-month mark. The only thing the rats had going for us was our highly prolific nature and enormous number of offspring we created.

Fortunately, I didn’t have to wait long before the J.T. the quartermaster showed up and gave me my job. Today, I was to go to the meadow and gather sunflower seeds; at least twenty of the delicious morsels. Although the seeds were not necessary for sustenance, they were rich in flavor and my personal favorite. I technically wasn’t allowed to eat any of the seeds, but what the quartermaster didn’t know couldn’t hurt me. The meadow, as with most areas neighboring the warren, was abundant with life, most of it deadly to me. Foxes, owls, hawks, snakes; it was all the same to me, painful death. Being the runt of the litter made me grow up faster than most, having to rely on my brain to survive. And something unique happened in the process; as I learned more, I began to want more. I wanted to do more than die by my sixth birthday. I wanted to leave the warren and explore the rest of this wide world. But not today; today, I was to get sunflower seeds.

“Good luck, Runt!” J.T. exclaimed. “I’ve got ten acorns riding on you today, you little fart! So don’t go dying on me, you hear?

I waved him off and muttered something distinctly uncouth under my breath, then did my best smile and raised my right forepaw in mock salute. This seemed to satisfy this particular rat-bastard.

As I began to follow the path that would eventually lead me out of the warren into our complex system of tunnels, I pondered my strategy for the day. The other rats would typically use stealth and sneak up on a particular plant, harvesting any seeds that had fallen to the ground or climbing up and extracting the seeds directly from the flower when necessary. Assuming they were fairly quiet, and luck was with them, much of the time they would escape notice. Other times they would be spotted and then the chase was on. The fast would tend to survive, the slow would – well, you get the picture. It could get quite messy.

I had a couple of ideas that I wanted to try out today, more out of a sense of survival than any sort of expression of creativity. And so here I stood, looking out from a small shadowy nook between the rocks and dirt of a small hill that overlooked the meadowy panorama. This spot provided a magnificent view of the entire area, including a large amount of assorted sunflower plants. Today I must succeed. Today I will succeed.

Taking a deep breath to steel myself, I began. Not by sneaking in, as you may have suspected, but by watching. Patience was what separated predator from prey. I was waiting for someone specific – Jerald. Jerald was the scariest, meanest son-of-a-doe in the warren. He didn’t have a lot of tricks up sleeve, but the ones he did were very effective. Jerald would wait until another rat was returning with their hard-fought bounty, then ambush them, claiming the prize for himself. Of course, the ambush and resulting fight would oftentimes draw the attention of a nearby predator. Jerald would always escape, using the injured rat as bait. Sometimes the bait lived, sometime the bait died. To him, it did not matter.

Well today was going to be different. Much different. With any luck, I would be able to do something about it.

As I waited with grim determination, fixated on the injustice of it all, I thought I saw movement to my left and below, from between a cluster of juniper bushes. At first, I didn’t see anything more interesting than an orange and yellow butterfly flutter into view and I nearly looked away. However, a silhouette of something flat to the ground caught my attention. The object was still at first, but then started to slither slowly and deliberately away from the juniper bushes. Inspecting further, I eventually identified it as the form of a rat slinking along the ground, crawling stealthily in the general direction of a particularly large sunflower plant.

Periodically tracking the shadowy form, I scanned the vicinity for predators, attempting to get a read of the newly developing situation. It looked like someone was going to get lucky, as the scene appeared relatively quiet today. Except for a hawk on the far side of the clearing, looking in the opposite direction, there appeared to be no other danger present. Good on you, friend, and good luck!

With no other activity to grab my attention, I kept tabs on the situation. Eventually, as the rat moved closer to its destination and closer to me, I realized it was Elsie, a chestnut brown rat from one of the nicer areas of the upper warren. While I didn’t know her well, she had never been overtly cruel to me, which was something of a rarity. To be fair, she also wasn’t notably kind to me either, but it was entirely possible she was just extremely introverted!

She continued moving until she reached the plant’s base. Once there, Elsie glanced around, whiskers twitching nervously in the early morning sunlight. After a moment’s hesitation, she began to climb up the shadowed side of the stalk. Making quick work of the ascent she reached the delectable seeds, removing a satchel slung across her torso, and began harvesting them with an intense efficiency. After almost a minute, she seemed satisfied with the bulging bag and proceeded to position it back on her body to get all four limbs free for the descent.

At this point I had to question her overall strategy as she began to squeak rather loudly, and I wondered what the bloody hell was going on. No sane rat would do this. It had to be something else, someone else. By her shocked facial expression, I could tell she was as surprised as me. Something unsavory was afoot.

Startled, she practically fell the entire distance to the ground when the red-tailed hawk I spotted earlier screeched in anger and excitement as it spun around and launched itself from top of the white birch tree it perched. As she began falling, she lost the grip on her bag, the contents hitting the ground and spilling out. It ended up working out in her favor, as she now had two free paws to ease her landing, although she screeched in pain as her right forepaw gained purchase in the plant but proceeded to bend at an unnatural angle. That’s going to smart in the morning!

She must have been aware of the impending danger because she made no attempt to recover her fallen treasures, instead scrambling the rest of the way to the ground and darting toward the safety of the bushes. I could see that she could no longer put weight on her injured leg. She was running as quickly as a rat with three legs could, which was, sadly, about as fast as I could run with four.

The hawk had made his dive, accelerating greatly, closing about half the distance to its potential meal before she ran more than a few feet away from the sunflower. This was going to be close.

At the same time the hawk made its move, I saw a figure emerge from under some loose leaves and dirt near the dropped bag. Jerald, you bastard, there you are! As he emerged from his hiding spot, he ran toward the dropped bag of seeds, a self-congratulating smile that I could see all the way up here. It would be another easy victory for him; he just needed to grab it and get to cover. However, things don’t always go according to plan, at least not if I had anything to say about it.

Now for my plan. Reaching for the large piece of slightly concave metal I had set aside days before, I quickly hefted it out of my shelter and positioned the business end of into the direct sunlight coming from my right. It took a moment to align, but once I did, I could see the focused beam flitting to and fro towards the bottom of my mound, mostly due to my tired limbs protesting the physical exertion. I sure hope this works! Adjusting my stance to get a better grip of the dish-like contraption, I got my rubbery arms to cooperate, with the rest of my body assisting in the process. I glanced out toward Jerald, who was just about at his goal. I needed to make this count and refocused my efforts. Straining in concentration, I carefully, or at least as carefully as one could when tilting something of this size, aimed the beam of light toward my mark. Just . . . about . . . have it. The light beam reflected from the sun and began to grow smaller and brighter as I leaned my weapon back a bit, getting within the effective range as allowed by the physical shape of the metal. It was so close!

Meanwhile, Jerald had grabbed the bag, throwing it over his torso, making a rude gesture with his back left leg toward Elsie. The gall of that rat! He has no shame, the ass! Quickly the larger rat spun around and started toward the less dangerous side of the meadow to make his getaway.

Elsie, running for all her worth, looked like she almost had a chance. That is, however, when she managed to clip her good front leg on a small rock, sending her into a faceplant to the dirt. The hawk, not missing a beat, screeched again in joy as it was now only seconds away from a high-protein breakfast.

Gerald, still wearing a shit-eating grin, was making good time. However, he adopted a troubled expression as he began to feel something on his right flank. Sparing a glance, he only had a moment to be confused at what he saw when his vision was blinded with a stinging bright light. There you go, big fella, hope you like that because I am just warming up! Strike that, not me, but you! I further adjusted the beam to keep it even with the eyes, knowing full well that the bright light would be most unpleasant. After a few seconds of this, I began to doubt my plan as nothing seemed to be happening. I may not be half as clever as I thought I was, hmm. Just then, it was Jerald’s turn to stumble and cry out loudly in pain. He had run himself directly into the base of a thistle plant with many purple blooms. I couldn’t help but bask in the warmth of the freshly-baked Schadenfreude.

With my aim now slightly off, I looked closer at what my light beam had wrought. I could see the seed bag lying a few paces behind the flailing body of Jerald, who was now screaming in pain. He was trying to his his front paws to block the intense light that was burning his eyes as he thrashed wildly, rolling around trying to find some measure of relief. It was my turn for a shit-eating grin, and it felt fantastic.

It didn’t take long before he managed regain at least some of his composure, however. He stood up, spinning wildly, looking for the source of his pain. Before Jerald saw me, his eyes focused on something else - something other than the afterimage caused by the extremely bright light. Didn’t your mum ever tell you to never, ever look directly at the sun?

The hawk, distracted by the commotion behind him, pulled out of his dive and turned toward the sound of the new and louder noise. One could not be too careful on the astral plane; there were always bigger and faster predators around. This was now the case, as he quickly located the bigger and juicier source, and it was prey! Perhaps he would have leftovers from the plump rat who had just made eye contact with him. He turned hard to his left and began flying fast towards its new target, having overflown Elsie due to the interruption.

I couldn’t hear Jerald as I was too far away, but my imagination and lip-reading abilities could fill the gap, however unfairly. “Mum, Mum, Mummy! Help! I think I made a poo poo! Oh noes! Oh Noes, I promise I won’t be a dirty little rat anymore, Mummy! Look at me! Look at me, I’m a huge arse and nobody likes me!” Well, I’m sure it was something like that. I’m not even sure I knew what a lip was at this point in my life.

Jerald ran and screamed loudly, all semblance of a plan either for ambush or escape now long gone. I’m quite sure he was having trouble running in a straight line at this point, so panicked he was. He was prime example of alpha male rate attitude and physical prowess, so still he ran with a great deal of speed even with his new visual impairment.

The hawk closed the gap at a terrible pace. Even so, it almost looked like Jerald would escape just by sheer luck and a powerful sense of self-preservation. However, luck was on his side today, bit unfortunately it was the bad kind - me.

Whistling casually to myself, as nonchalant as a rat could be, I readjusted my mirror one last time toward the now literal and figurative target of my ire. Unfortunately for him, I had spent a great deal of time practicing. With a little effort and even less time, I had the reflected sunlight back into his eyes, causing him to panic even more, which at this point I had thought not physically possible. The poor old chap, I almost felt sorry for him. On second thought, I didn’t feel sorry at all.

Fully blinded once again, Jerald, last of his name, veered wildly away from the thick bush he had been generally headed toward. This was most unfortunate, as this led him over the edge of a large rut in the ground, sending him tumbling. Luckily for him, he didn’t have to worry about falling for long as that was when the hawk grabbed him with its large, sharp talons and pinned him to the ground.

I couldn’t see what happened next and I was alright with that. My job here was almost done. But not too long after that, the screaming stopped. A bit of thrashing about of the parts of the hawk that I could still see, and the screams eventually were silenced. Shortly thereafter, the hawk flew off with meal in its grasp. Another happy customer.

With all the commotion and violence, I casually walked up to the fallen bag of seeds, brushed a bit of dirt off it, popped one into my mouth, and started heading back to the warren.