4:11

The beaver went back on his haunches. The rat went backwards out of the box. And the contents of the box went pretty much everywhere as it overturned.

“BLESSED Garfinkle!” shouted the beaver as he swung his small brown arms, trying to regain his equilibrium. “What the hell’s the matter with you, you vile stupid rodent? Are you trying to kill me?” he finished between taking big gulps of air.

Dropping back to all fours he took a menacing step forward, fur bristling until he looked twice the size. “Get your scrawny carcass out here where I can see you,” he growled, realizing he sounded not unlike a rat terrier he had once met in the south of France.

The was no movement.

“I said, GET. YOUR. SCRAWNY. ASS. OUT. HERE. Right now!”

Still no movement and nothing but a lot of silence.

“I am not crawling any further under this disgusting furnace for the sake of a rat,” he muttered to himself and took a small step toward the scattered papers from the overturned box.

He started scooping the papers together and then grabbed the ratty box and dragged it toward himself. He kept an eye on the darkness behind the furnace and occasionally thought he saw some movement.

“I hate rats,” he mumbled to himself. “Only good thing about this job was there weren’t supposed to be any rats. And what do I find? Stupid rat.”

Eventually the beaver got everything collected into the now much less than sturdy cardboard container. It could hardly be called a box anymore as the one side was torn down to the bottom and none of the tape seemed to have any adhesive left. He dragged back out from under the low ceiling, keeping half an eye on the space where he had last seen the rat.

“Now what?” he called aloud to the darkness. “Am I supposed to just leave you there?”

Silence.

“Stupid RAT! I’ve got better things to do with my time than deal with slimy-tailed flea-bitten vermin…”

Nothing

“Aargh!” The beaver let out a strangled growl and divided his attention between the treasure at his feet and the hidden foe lurking in the shadows. After a few moments of this mutter-filled tableau the beaver glanced down to the top sheet of paper, where the phrase “Last Will and Testament” caught his eye. He grabbed the sheet and turned to read the rest of it. Of course at that moment, the rat, mangy and hungry and very, very frightened, made a break for it, heading straight for the beaver who stood between him and some sort of freedom.

An observer, had there been any, might have quipped ’bowling for beavers’ at the results of Ezekial’s rash choice. But alas, there was no one there to see the resulting collision except a small family of spiders, which frankly didn’t care.