Myth and Legends

The Fruit Bat

There once was a family of rats who had just moved to love on the top of the dark ceiling of a house. They consisted of Mama Rat, Papa Rat and two child rats. They gnawed a hole through the ceiling big enough for all of them to pass through. Hence, they would enter and exit through this hole going to the kitchen to gather food.

They would climb up and down the shelve and chew open the lids of the straw baskets where the owners kept the food and rice and steal as much as they could carry back to their hole. When food becomes scarce, they would tear up the dresses of the two poor couple and made fun of them.

One day, the owners of the house got real mad at what they were doing. They placed mousetraps at various corners of the kitchen. To top it all, they also raised a big cat to scare away the rats for good. The cat would make her rounds in the kitchen while waiting for the rats to come out.

When Mama Rat and Papa Rat came to know of these developments, they warned their children saying, “Be extra careful when you go out to gather food. There are mousetraps everywhere. And even worse, there’s a big cat on the loose.” But Mama Rat really got peeved because right after they cautioned the two children, one of them nearly got caught with a mousetrap.

Although she was able to escape, her tail was cut off when the mousetrap snapped. She came home to the ceiling crying. After being scolded by Mama Rat, the little rat ran crying to Papa Rat, saying, “I won’t ever leave the hole again.”

“But you will have to,” Papa Rat told his poor child, “if you don’t go out and help us search for food, we will have nothing to eat.” The little rat shyly walked to a corner with a heavy heart. Soon she found herself alone for everyone had left. After a little while, she gathered uh her courage and peeped out of the mouse hole.

As she did, she saw a lizard walking on the ceiling. The lizard approached her, “Why are you sad, little rat?” He told the lizard the reason why she was sad and even showed her back that had lost it’s cute tail. After hearing what the little rat had to say, the lizard said some words of advice. “So you won’t have a hard time looking for food, why don’t you just eat the insects?”

The little rat was confused and went on to ask, “But how do you supposed I could eat the insects? They fly an it would be hard to catch them if I can’t fly also.” The lizard readily answered question. “Well, I could teach you how to grow wings. This is what you do: Keep pulling the skins under your armpits until they become loose.

Then also stretched those along your arms and back until they are long and wide enough you could flap them like wings.” The little rat obediently followed the advice of the lizard. After a few days, she succeeded in growing her own pair of wings. She tried flapping them then flew around a few times.

She could now fly and catch insects. She did not realize she had become a bat. Life became happier for her from then on. Though she got to marry and ordinary rat, some of her offspring were tailless and grew natural wings who together began a pure race of bats of their own among which feed on insects that feed on fruits, better known as fruit bats or kabag-kabag in the local dialect.