A fictional story written and told by EzekieL...

I used to live next to a field, on a farm out in the flat Bavarian countryside. Flat? Oh yes, there are lots of areas in Bavaria that are flat, the alps don't stretch all over bavaria. 
Running a farm is tiring... more tiring than you could imagine... especially you city folk. But working on a farm, in the open air with only a few other guys to talk to; there was Hans, and Siegfried
the two farm helpers, and no one else; is more satisfying a day's labour than any office job.
My wife died... perhaps because of the work, perhaps because of longing for the city... I like to think that I had no hand in this business, but it was probably more my fault than anyone else's.
So 10 long years I have worked the farm alone, with Hans and Siegfried, and when haymaking came a few other lads out of the village. 
Oh, and Lars too...
It was november and we were putting the tarpaulin over the Haystacks to keep them from going rotten when the snow melted come spring.
There was something strange about this one Haystack... it was infested with rats... but that wasn't strange, apart from more rats than usual.
The strange thing was that whenever I put poison down for the rats, poisoned oats (which normally litters the area around it with dead grey rats) it would remain untouched.
Now the only reason why rats won't touch something like that is when they are full from eating something else, but Hans insisted that these rats were just getting used to the old poisoned oats.
But I insisted that it was something else wrong. 
So this icey, clear november day, the sky crystal clear, blue with wispy clouds pulled across it like ribbons, I decided we should cut that one haystack open.
The wind cut into my skin, whipped through my coat and caused everyone there to flush red.
Siegfried was doing the cutting-open, and as usual, a few people came around to see what was going on, and to talk.
He was cutting through the hay with a long knife, when suddenly he struck something hard.
"Hey Matheus, there's something hard here!" (Matheus is my name)
"Just continue cutting!" shouted one of the men of the village, pompous in his age and advice.
"Maybe we should stop?" I thought out loud.
"Nah... it's nothing but a stick, go on lad, keep on going" said the same pompous guy... actually the "leader" of the village.  
I say "leader" because the women and most of the men took him for leader but that he was not.
I was thinking back to last May when we made this haystack. May... it was very hot and Lars was there... 
Lars is the village drunk, friendly enough, used to take care of the kids until his wife left him and he took to the bottle.
Let me think... Lars was there, so were Siegfried and Hans, as usual, and so were a few of the men from the village... I went down to the shop to buy a crate of beer.
I only had two... Siegfried had a few, Hans had a few, everyone had one or two... but we were only seven... Lars must have had about 12 or 13.
Then suddenly it clicked in my mind... 
The rats, the hard "stick"... 
and I began running. 
Even so, I wasn't fast enough not to hear Siegfried's scream when he found out what the rats had been feasting on...
the end