A murmur of approval.
Sor Juana raised a paw. “Too crude. We are academics, not vandals. I propose we leak his expense reports .”
“Savages,” the rat would mutter, chewing thoughtfully. “Absolute savages.” RATOS-A- DE ACADEMIA -
Not mice. Mice were timid, scatterbrained, and easily caught. Rats were survivors. Rats remembered. Rats held grudges.
The monocled rat adjusted his eyewear. “I propose we gnaw the structural integrity of the Dean’s new Tesla .” A murmur of approval
The rats went silent.
“Excuse me,” Alba whispered. “Did you just grade my student’s paper?” We are academics, not vandals
There was Aristóteles , a scarred gray rat who wrote scathing critiques of Kant’s categorical imperative from a Marxist perspective. Sor Juana , a white-furred female who had single-handedly corrected every mistranslation of Ovid in the university’s copy of the Metamorphoses . And El Jefe , a massive, one-eared brown rat who had once been a lab animal before escaping and dedicating his life to statistical analysis. He wore a tiny vest made of a recycled postage stamp.
Alba became their reluctant collaborator. She brought them cheese rinds and, in return, they alerted her to grade inflation scandals, falsified data, and one memorable occasion when a visiting scholar tried to pass off a Wikipedia article as his own research. (The rats ate his laptop cable at 3 AM, then gnawed the word “FRAUD” into his leather briefcase.)