Week 9 story - "The rats and the opossum"

Two rats. Image Link

One early morning, during a time of great scarcity, a greedy rat came across an enormous and ripe peach that had fallen from the tallest branch of a nearby peach tree. Overjoyed, the hungry rat quickly dragged the delicious fruit back to its nearby hole. Once the rat had arrived home, his equally greedy brother asked where he had found such a good looking piece of fruit.

“It was under the large peach tree down by river bend,” explained the rat, “and it’s all mine!”

The brother, too lazy to go find his own fruit, immediately began plotting an evil scheme to steal the rat’s peach. Later that evening, while the rat was enjoying his delicious peach, the brother appeared with a few measly pecans he had found while scavenging. He showed them off the rat in an attempt to bait him.

“Since you live under my roof, you must give me half of your nuts!” Said the rat, unknowing falling victim to the brother’s scheme.

“No, they’re all mine! But you can have them all if you can catch me!” The brother immediately took off, and the rat began to chase him, leaving the peach unprotected.

Unbeknownst to the rat, earlier while the brother was scavenging, he had secretly gone to their neighbor's hole where the honest and virtuous Opossums lived with their great big family. The brother explained to father opossum that he was in possession of a gigantic and delicious peach, so large that he could not move the fruit into his room! He asked the opossum that if he used his great muscles to move the fruit from one place to the brother's room, he would pay him back with half of the peach. A promise that the brother had no intention to keep. The opossum agreed to this. The brother told the opossum to wait until dinner time when he and the rat would be gone to have dinner with their parents.

At dinner time, the Opossum went over to the rat’s hole. Sure enough, neither the rat nor his brother was anywhere in sight. He was stunned, for he had never seen such a giant peach in his life. He immediately began to think of his large family, which had not had one decent meal all season due to the scarcity of food. The opossum, knowing of rat’s and their horrible reputations, decided that he would break his promise and stole the peach. He took the peach back to his hole, and the opossum family quickly devoured the entire peach. The father opossum then took the pit and buried it behind his hole so that one day, they would have a peach tree of their own.

The rat had eventually caught the brother and took all his pecans. They both returned home and were both surprised to see that the peach had disappeared! Enraged at the opossum’s betrayal, the brother told the rat that their neighbor, the opossum, must have stolen the fruit while they were gone. They went to the opossum's hole but could not find a single trace of the peach.

The rat because suspicious of his brother and figured that there must have been foul play involved. For this, he kicked his brother out of their hole and ate the few pecans he had left. The brother, homeless and hungry, wandered for the rest of the season. The opossums never went hungry again for the pit grew into a giant peach tree, which gave them plentiful peaches every year.

Moral of the story: A virtuous man will do anything to care for his family.

Author's Notes ----

This story is based on the story "The Greedy Crow" from the book "Filipino Popular Tales" by Dean Spruill Fansler, which you can find the link to here.

I  changed the characters in the story from birds to mammals to make it different. I also changed the plot so that the rat had a brother, and I was trying to follow the original story so that mine would teach the same lesson, but I couldn't figure out how to give it a good ending. I just let the opossum break his moral compass because you gotta do what you gotta when you're taking care of a family.