Little Troublemakers

Nick and his gang were always getting into trouble. That was an accepted part of life, as natural as gravity or hiding from the humans. On the night of this story, they had decided to do something particularly daring and stupid. They had decided to get a closer look at the human boy, Zach. A much closer look. After they were certain he had fallen asleep, the five young Rattan snuck into his room and clambered up the sheets onto his bed.
“Are you sure this is quite safe?” asked Rico, the youngest and most timid member of the gang.

“Course it’s safe,” said Nick. “He’s a deep sleeper; he won’t wake up.”

Slowly, they walked up his chest, their feet sinking into the soft blanket. Finally, they reached his face. “Wow,” breathed Louis, Nick’s second in command. “He sure looks different up close.”

Just then, Zach rolled onto his side, sending the small intruders tumbling down next to him. They all let out varied exclamations of surprise and annoyance as they landed in a pile on the bed. The human’s eyelids flickered, and despite their uncomfortable positions, all five Rattan froze, going so far as to even hold their breath. Luckily, Zach merely turned his face into the pillow and lay still once more.

Growing brave once more, the Rattan boys climbed up the nearly vertical slope to his shoulder, whispering to each other along the way. However, when they were only partway up, the ground beneath them moved once more as Zach turned over to his other side, and they all tumbled down again. This time, his hand flopped over as well, and, as chance would have it, landed atop of Nick. The fingers curled around him and he was brought closer, as though the sleeping human thought he was a teddy bear.

“Help me!” Nick called, quite terrified. Timidly, his gang approached the enormous hand.

“What do we do?” one of them asked.

“Get him to let go somehow!”

They tried to pry his fingers open, but instead he curled them in even more firmly.

“Let’s try tickling him,” Rico suggested. “That always works on m-… er, on my little sister.”

“Tickle him?” Ruff repeated.

“It could work,” Nick said. “Try it!”

Rico crept up to Zach’s face, turned around, and began to tickle him under the nose with the tuft of fur at the end of his tail. The human wrinkled his nose and made a number of faces, and, finally, let go of Nick to brush away the annoyance, who scrambled to get out of the way before he too was caught.

The five Rattan climbed very quickly down the sheets to the floor, and hurried out the door into the hallway, where they clambered back through the opening in the wall.

“Let’s not ever do that again,” Louis said. “That was a little bit too much excitement.”

The others had to agree.