Marshall wasn’t pleased with Norville’s performance from the past few weeks, he had always arrived late. Today was no exception to this – Paris managed to make it on the trolley at least thirty minutes early.

  “Nice to see you Paris, what about Norville and the others?” asked Marshall.

  “Oh, they decided to walk” laughed Paris.

  Marshall wanted to give Norville a challenge – arrive by 9 AM or he will be fired! Lucky Marshall had Norville’s cellphone number and sent a text message to him.

  “YOU BETTER MAKE IT HERE WITHIN THE NEXT HOUR OR YOU WILL BE FIRED!” said Marshall in the text message.

  Norville who was just doing his best trying to get out of the coffee shop took one glance at the message. He knew he had to rush over, but he was just about a block away, and it was quite a long block that he had to travel.

  “You can do it, you can do it!” thought Norville.

  Norville did his best, trying to head across the street, but even while he made it across the next block, there were slews of construction worker rats in Norville’s way. There were so many of them, that some of them managed to knock him down and trample him. Norville’s coffee even spilled on the ground.

  “My coffee, you rats, watch where you’re going!” cried Norville.

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  Then one of the rats turned around – this rat known as Sam didn’t appreciate Norville yelling at him. The other rats then glared at Norville.

  “This bat thinks he can give us orders” laughed Sam.

  “Yea, I say we teach him a lesson!” said another rat.

  “Good idea!” laughed Sam, “CHARGE!”

  Norville swallowed – not again! He then had to go into an alleyway that was close by the office. He couldn’t believe he was chased by a bunch of rats! They were practically his cousins!

  “This isn’t looking good for me” thought Norville.

  Norville needed to find a hiding spot, but the only suitable location would be a dumpster and he didn’t want to get himself all dirty at all, or Marshall would surely fire him for that. Instead, he spotted a flower shop’s back entrance and decided to go from there.

  “Guess I’ll take a detour” said Norville.

  As Norville headed into the flower shop, it was owned by a squirrel named Caroline.

  “Welcome to my flower shop, never seen a customer get through that way before, come in” said Caroline.

  Caroline was rather lonely and didn’t have a single customer all morning. She couldn’t believe what a break. Norville checked his watch – he knew Marshall would be mad at him. But then he heard voices outside the alleyway – the rats were not giving up on their search for him.

  “He went this way, no way he went into that flower shop” said another rat.

  Norville was safe – but Caroline wanted to give a long boring introduction to her flower collection. That would surely bore poor Norville to death, maybe the rats were not going to be so bad to him after all. Then again, he heard the rats harass a homeless pigeon who was just minding his own business in the alleyway.

  “I’m telling you, I haven’t seen any bat” said the pigeon.

  “Really, maybe we better make you talk” laughed Sam.

  The other rats all began to gang up on the poor pigeon, Norville knew he had to do something.