Springtime is a good time for my friends and me. It starts warming up, for one thing, and then the humans all start spending time outside, which means we have free reign over their rooms. The best part of spring though, at least in my opinion, is the candy.

I’ve never been sure what it is about this time of year that causes the humans to start hoarding candy, and they don’t all do it. Last year a bird named Melpomene got trapped in the building, and she said the humans collected candy as part of a ritual for appeasing the little humans, but that never made sense to me since our building doesn’t have any small humans in it.

Regardless of why they do it, every year without fail, the humans gather up bags and bags of sugary, delicious candy, and then leave it all in their rooms to go sit outside on a blanket for no apparent reason.

Usually, it’s just Calliope and me who go on candy runs together, but today we’d been invited over by one of the rats who lived on the fourth floor, and oh, how that changed things.

“Thalia! Calliope! There you are!”

Erato greeted us with excitement in her voice, already practically bouncing with excitement. I tried not to visibly swoon. Erato is the cutest rat I’ve ever met, and she’s pretty much perfect in every possible way. Hanging out with her is amazing, but it’s also terrifying because I worry about messing things up by saying something dumb.

Today though, today we had candy to eat. And doesn’t that just make every situation better? Especially when Erato led us back to the room she liked to stay in and revealed the giant bag of colorful little beans that was sitting on the floor.

“Gosh, your humans are great,” Calliope said, staring up at the bag in awe.

“It’s being held shut by a bag clip,” Erato said smugly, grabbing onto the edge of the bag and bringing it down to our level. The simple plastic clip came off with ease, as it didn’t even require opposable thumbs to remove. Silly humans.

The bag opened, and a wave of sugary goodness spilled out across the floor. It was amazing. It was colorful. It smelled so good. It was absolutely—

“Ahhhh! Ew! Oh my god, there are rats in my dorm!”

The three of us looked up in panic to see that the door had opened and Erato’s humans had returned.

“Uh oh.”

“Eeeek! Kill it! Kill them! This is so gross!”

“We should run now.”