[Apologue, a moral fable, especially one with animals as characters.]*

Once upon a time, there was a beautiful garden. It was filled with lush fruit trees and vegetables and flowers of every color.

On this day, the sun shone warm and bright even though it was late afternoon.

Three rabbits and a baby bunny were in a sort of circle, sharing a meal of a small green apple that had fallen from the tree and rolled onto the lawn.

I was able to view this idyllic scene directly from my bedroom window where I had stopped for a moment to take off a couple of rings and a bracelet.

Without warning, a gigantic rat ran up to the bunnies, stole the apple and scurried away with it in his mouth.

None of the bunnies seemed to care or even defend their ownership of the apple.

I became paralyzed, rooted to the floor, unable to process what I was seeing and unable to even snap a photo.

The End

*I don’t know what the moral of this story is supposed to be, except that I seem to be surrounded by vermin and also it’s also a play on words (apple/apologue).

More than 15,000 rat bites are reported each year in the United States. All rat bites should be treated by a doctor. Some of the diseases that can be spread from rats to people are bubonic and pneumonic plague, murine typhus, salmonella, leptospirosis, Hantavirus, and tularemia.