Red-Blue was sitting in his corner, face turned away from all of the other rats, obsessively attempting to chew at the small spot in the plexiglass, when the young humans came in.  He hadn't really made much progress, but it was starting to become a spot that he could feel as well as see, and his front teeth were starting to encounter a slight bit of resistance, as he turned the smooth surface into a small pit.

When the adolescent humans first entered the room that his cage was in, Red-Blue almost didn't notice, since he had plenty of food already and was not wanting to interact with anyone or anything else; being in this overcrowded cage was already a case of non-stop overstimulation, and he was feeling irritable and anti-social.

"Oh, there they are!" said Eugene.  "Shhhhhhh!" said Dorothy, Mildred, Stanley, and Raymond in unison.

Red-Blue looked up, and saw five humans.  It was not actually able to remember, at first, that it had seen one of them before.  Red-Blue had a reasonably good ability to tell one human from another by sight (better than Dorothy had to tell one lab rat from another without looking at the colors on their tail), but it had only met Dorothy a couple times, and inside its plexiglass cage it could not easily smell them.  However, he did get a vague sense of familiarity, which was slightly reassuring.  He continued to look up at them, and moved closer to the sliding door at the top of the cage, which the human hands would come through.

"I want to pet one!" whispered Dorothy.

"No!" whispered Stanley, almost reflexively.

"I've done it before!" hissed Dorothy.  "It'll be fine."

"Can I do it, too?" asked Mildred, eyes excited, the hint of a smile on her face.

"We shouldn't touch them!" hissed Stanley, attempting to simultaneously whisper but also shout, and thus failing to do either.

Red-Blue saw the sliding-door at the top of the cage slide open.  He stood up on his hind legs, his nose and whiskers quivering.  He saw the human hand of the vaguely familiar looking female descend towards him.  It gently rubbed between his ears, and rolled him over on his belly.  He felt some of his anxious tension release, and he laughed (although again at too high frequency for the humans to hear).

"Don't, you're hurting it!" said Stanley.

"No I'm not, I'm tickling it.  It likes it," said Dorothy.

"Let me try!" said Eugene, pushing forward.  Reflexively, Dorothy put up one arm to ward him off, not because she had any particular suspicion that Eugene was going to try to do something wrong, but simply because she was quite fond of the lab rats (remember they were the first mammals, other than humans, she had ever seen in real life), and Eugene did have a tendency to break things even when he didn't mean to.

Red-Blue felt the approach of Green-Red, his old friend.  A few days ago this would have been unobjectionable, even reassuring, but given the events of the last few days Red-Blue was nervous.  Some of the rats had become inseparable, huddling close to each other at all times and doing little else, so as not to set off a response from the rest.  Others, like Red-Blue, had become antisocial, keeping others at a distance to avoid overstimulation or conflict.  Red-Blue turned towards Green-Red, and bared his teeth.

Dorothy, startled, jerked her hand back, and it caught on the sliding door at the top of the cage.  She lurched backwards, with the full strength of her legs, in an instinctive reflex to get her hand away from the bared teeth that she had just caught a glimpse of in real life for the first time.  The cage tipped over, she pulled her hand out, and the rats poured out of the opening.

Bad words were said.  Accusations and counter-accusations were made.  Predictions of impending doom were made.  A lifetime of shame and opprobrium was predicted.  While this all happened, the rats scurried about the small room, seeking out a dark corner somewhere that they could relax for the first time in days.

"Why don't we just put them back in?" asked Eugene.

The others all looked at Eugene as if he were mentally deficient.  Finally, Mildred stated what they were all thinking.

"They'll bite you, silly," she said.

"Are you sure?" he asked.  Then, he leaped to one side, grabbed a surprised Green-Red, and held him up.  Green-Red, the descendant of many, many generations of lab rats bred to be docile when handled by humans, went limp.  Eugene grabbed the cage with his other hand, set it back right-side up, and then unceremoniously dumped the rat back inside it.

"Careful, you'll hurt it!" said Dorothy.

"You just said it would bite me, now you're worried about me hurting it," said Eugene, and he grabbed another, whose tail had purple and green stripes dyed on it.  It went limp in his hands.

"Poor thing!" said Dorothy, "It's frightened!"

"Here," said Eugene, "put it back in while I get the others."

Before Dorothy could object, he had dumped Purple-Green into her hands, and she found herself looking down into the small, pink eyes of a white lab rat.  It looked up at her, whiskers twitching, and was otherwise very cautious and still.

There then followed a good-natured scramble, as the humans played a game of "cat and mouse" with the lab rats, except it was actually more a game of tag, and any rat that was caught had to return to "home base" (that being the cage).  The humans were still attempting to be quiet, although anyone walking in the hallway just outside the closed door would doubtless have heard some sounds of shuffling feet, whispered exhortations, and the occasional bumping of human into box or crate.  Still, as there wasn't in fact anyone in the hallway at that time, they were quiet enough to not attract any attention from further away.

"Did we get them all?" asked Stanley after a few minutes.  Everyone looked at each other, then at the cage, now with the proper side facing up and full of lab rats that scampered around excitedly, sniffing each other, grooming themselves, and gradually calming down again.

"How would we know?  Did anyone count them beforehand?" asked Raymond.  He was only a peripheral member of the "new soil crew", for a couple reasons.  The first was that he so often stayed at Circle for the entire time, and thus missed the discussions that happened in the new soil room.  The second, was that he was, perhaps, excessively skeptical, even more than Stanley.  He was usually unwilling to participate in their various projects, since he could see too many things that could go wrong, and in some cases, if invited, he might have told the adults about the plan ahead of time in order to prevent it.  "It is easier to ask for forgiveness than permission", was one of Mildred's favorite sayings, and Raymond was an "ask for permission" kind of person.  But the third reason, was that having someone around who was so good at pointing out everything wrong with a plan, went past the point of useful feedback and into the realm of buzzkill or wet blanket.

"The cage looks pretty full," said Mildred.  "I think we got them all."

"Let's look around the room one more time," said Stanley, with a worried tone in his voice.

They spent another couple minutes satisfying themselves that there were no loose rats left in the room, and then quietly exited the room.  Stanley was quiet, Raymond was quiet, Dorothy and Mildred were quiet.  Even Eugene was quiet.

And so was the rat that one of the humans carried out in their pocket.