Rats, French Toast and Fun...

Today (March 12, 2011) our family traveled to Raleigh to attend the Young Author's Awards for the state of North Carolina. Students from across the state in grades K-12 submitted stories for their class competition.  Ana's story advanced out of her class and out of the county all the way to the state finals, which means that you get your story published and receive a medal, and that's where we were today.  It was great to have my mom, an aspiring young author herself, with us as we celebrated with Ana and Pedro the rat. Below is Ana's story - her account of a true life ordeal from a couple years ago.  There are also some pictures from the Award Ceremony at the Raleigh Convention Center. 

Rats, French Toast and Fun!

By Diana Eileen Hill

Mrs. Wilson

Fourth Grade

Buies Creek Elementary School

One day I was doing my homework at the kitchen table while my mom was cooking our dinner. She was making French toast.  I glanced out our big glass window to our backyard and what do you think I saw?  A big white lab rat!

Now at first I didn’t know it was a lab rat.   I just said to my mom, “Hey look!  There’s a mouse in our backyard!”  My mom said, “What?” and came to the window.  She couldn’t believe what she saw!  It was the biggest, whitest rat she had ever seen, leaping through the grass!  My dad and sisters came to the window, too, and we all watched as he came running towards us and disappeared around the corner of our house.  We all ran to another room to watch him out the other window.

            My mom immediately suspected that it was a lab rat from Campbell University because their scientists have a small building at the end of our street.  She called one of the professors and he said, “Oh, that’s Pedro!  Catch him and I’ll pick him up tomorrow!”  Uh uh!  My dad said he was not catching that big rat! 

            We called the professor back and he said he’d come get him that day if we caught him.   We said okay and began to think about how to catch a rat.  We thought and thought but couldn’t come up with any way to catch him without having to touch him.  Gross!  We called our neighbors the Meyers to see if they could help us catch Pedro.  Their family has all boys—ours has all girls—so they like things like rats more than we do.  They said they’d be right over.

Meanwhile, Pedro came up the porch steps and began sniffing around the front door.  That’s when we realized that he could smell our dinner cooking.  He was hungry for French toast!

            When the Meyers boys got there they began to track down the rat.  When they caught up with him, Pedro crawled under the air conditioning unit.  They tried to pull him out but that didn’t work.  Then I had an idea!  I yelled, “Here!  Give him some French toast!” and I handed them a piece out the window.  It worked!  The French toast lured him out and we caught him!

            The professor finally arrived and we gave him Pedro and he thanked us.  We had a big garden spider on our house and he took that, too!  It was a very interesting day full of rats, French toast and fun!