Email Jim at jim.thompson@ipulpmedia.com

By Jim Thompson interpreting for Fos the Rat

Yes, it is August again and its is corruption month at Paperitalo Publications. We rats have observed in the past year that the human engagement in corruption is not limited to pulp and paper mills. This last statement may sound naïve, but one must understand our methods of communications are rather limited (basically just walking around and talking to each other) so we perhaps don't get all the information Big Things do.

We understand that Big Things are highly dependent on energy sources that are not just their own muscle power. We understand this and do not understand it at the same time, since all we have are our muscles to use for conveyance and transportation. We also use our teeth to drag things from one place to another.

We further understand you use a source called "electricity" which is carried by wires. We like to eat the insulation off wires, and I guess that jolt we get sometimes when eating the insulation must be the thing you call electricity. I, Fos, even understand that electricity is involved in operating this computer.

But I digress. Apparently, from what we can discern, Big Things all over the world are quite anxious about energy these days. Apparently there has been a lot of cheating going on in this energy area.

Our Pulp Rats convention this year moved back to what humans call southern areas. It was larger than ever.

There seemed to be a condition for many lights where Big Things were not meeting together. We noticed that the means of transportation available to us were quite limited for a while. Other than this, we did not understand the conditions. We carried on as usual, making babies, eating insulation, find the occasional bit of food Big Things dropped.

As I said, Big Things seem to be on the move again and so were we. We met on the edge of a large salty, watery place. We heard there is a paper mill here that is about to be shut down and we wanted to get to the wires before anyone else does. At the same time, we are concerned about the long squiggly things that get in the water. They like to eat us. But at this location, we ran into something new. It sort of looked like logs painted green and with four legs. At the same time, on the dangerous end, it had this huge snapping mouth full of big teeth and it seemed determined to eat us en masse.

By and by the Cadre called us to order with the Great Mother presiding.

"Attention! Attention!" The Great Mother called us to order. "Thank you all for attending again this year. Unfortunately, it appears the Big Things have not learned their lessons and we must continue to report on their misdeeds.

"The Cadre has held a number of discussions since we last met. We have determined that we can no longer just record the bad behavior of which we hear; we must be proactive about dealing with it. Consequently, following this convention, we will be holding a training session with the objective of training volunteers to take action against the Big Things when they see these bad deeds.

"This training will be broken into two distinct parts. The first part will train rat volunteers to spot immoral and unethical behavior. The second part will be to punish the Big Things that do immoral and bad behavior.

"The punishment training will be conducted to train rats how to invade the Big Things offices, homes, and other places and then bite them repeatedly."

Well, if you ever get an unexplained bite, you might want to stop and think from whence it came and, if, by chance you deserved it.

To be continued next week.

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