Reader Writes December 2024

Letter from a rat: Dear Yumans, I wish to record and give notice of some extraparticular

and unordinary happenings recorded by us rat-people; and we feel you yumans need to

take note. This is Rat 4 writing to you; forgive the numbers but I know you struggle with

foreign names, especially ours which is all squeaks. Time back, way back, in the dead of

winter in Bethlehem, when the moon was right full, there was a most extraordinary

proceeding in these parts. And strange though it seems to Rat 4, this all came forth in our

stable, and the Rat King of these parts has instructed me to tell any yumans with the wit to

listen that we thinks there are most philosophic and spiritual consequences for yumans

and creaturedoms alike. Forgive my abundant liberties with your unsqueakable language.

So this is what we saw. In our stable in a cold mid-winter, we rat-people found ourselves

overrun with all of God’s creation. The place was heaving, and into our steaming and

breath-clouding stable there came a man with his teenage bride full ready to have her

child. Then late in the night when the town was almost silent we realized that the girl was

littering, right there in the corner in a nest of straw. Move over dogs and make way rat-

people. A huge commotion happened; angelic voices made us cry in storms of joy, a

spiritual wind that shook our souls. Rats squealed in song, a cockerel crowed for the end

of the world, dogs yarooed and zanted on hind legs, and a donkey brayed and brayed for

joy. We was overwhelmed; a child was born, the umbilical cord transferred life from

somewhere very far off to this, this, our world. A boy, a child-God, a promised miracle

visitation to this struggling dark world.

Well streams of strange visitors started arriving: Shepherds and untidy dogs, shaggy and

not stable-trained. A mighty angel had appeared to them in the fields and terrified them,

saying “Fear not, for I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people on

earth. For to you is born this day a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord. And this is a sign; you

shall find the babe wrapped in shawls, lying in a manger.” Then a great army of angels

appeared praising God “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will to all

people.”

Forgive a political aside. It seems to us that you yumans, and creaturedoms alike, are in

grave peril. Is it 1933 all over again? Must this hateful Orange Caesar prevail? So where is

hope? Is it there but never for us? No! It’s through the cracks, the cracks in this poor world,

that’s how the light gets in. And into this very darkness a light has come that the darkness

shall never overcome.

Well dear Yumans, I leave you to think these impressimented proceedings into some sort

of order. But it is clear to us creatures that God, the Creator (yumans and rodentkind alike)

has come amongst us. He has come to defeat death, to open a gate into the full granary of

eternal life. He has turned the world upside down. Hope and life in its fullness came to

stay. Thank you God, Amen! Your humble rodent neighbour, Rat 4

Robert MacCurrach

[Editing note: “Rodent grammar” by design. Idea came from George Saunders who wrote Fox 8.

Yarooing and Zanting come from the 80s forgotten classic Riddley Walker by Russell Hoban.]