The Rat, the Hawk and the Octopus

This tale is a long, pleasant narration of Mr Rat's misadventures with his fellow creatures: first, with animals of the air and especially the Hawk (Circus approximans); and then animals of the sea, above all the Octopus. This story consists of several parts: [1] the Rat is paddling in his canoe, but several birds harass him, wanting to embark with him (this gives the tale its song); the boat nearly sinks. [2] while on the boat, the Rat steals a piece of yam belonging to the Hawk; the Hawk takes his revenge by making the boat sink. [3] the Rat swims to escape death, and asks for the help of a shark, of the Turtle, of the Dolphin, and finally the Octopus accepts to carry him. But when the Octopus realises the Rat is laughing at him, he tries to kill him. [4] the last part is an etiological reflection about how this story accounts for nowadays rats and octopuses. We believe this version probably mingles more than one traditional plot: in particular, the first part [1] is a crescendo which should naturally result in the boat sinking, but the episode of the hawk [2] brings in a new suspense; finally, the story with the octopus could form a whole tale per se. The result of this assortment is a pleasant, poetic and lively tale, in which each animal is endowed with its own human-like psychology and world. The personification of animals is patent in the many details of the story (e.g. the rat is going to have lunch with his Mum, or the birds threaten him with telling everything to their Dad when he comes back home), but it is also visible linguistically, through their genitive and object marking.