Why do rats have only one tail?

All rats have only one tail, but this was not always the case. Many years back, rats had different number of tails. Some had two, some three, and there has been news of a rat that even had twenty! So why did all that eventually change?

Once upon a time, there were two rats- Alice and Bob. Bob had two tails, while Alice had ten! Now ten tails were just too many, even back then. Consequently, other rats made fun of Alice. She was constantly ridiculed, and no rat wanted to be her friend.

One day Alice decides that she had had enough. She went to the butcher and asked him to cut-out one of her tails. The butcher gladly obliged. Alice was very happy with one less tail, but to her dismay the ridicule didn’t stop. Nine was still too large a number! So she went back to the butcher the next day, asking him to cut one more. The number of tails became eight. Unfortunately for Alice, the situation remained the same as before. She went to the butcher once again. Slowly, the number of Alice’s tail started reducing, till she was able to conform to the general rat population. But by this time, her act of going to the butcher had become a habit instead of a need. So she continued visiting the place even when she had just a single tail left. After that was cut-off, she had no tail at all!

Though they had different numbers of tails, not a single rat was without one! Now Alice was ridiculed for having no tail at all. As far as she was concerned, it was back to where it started- constantly ridiculed, without any real friends to call her own. She went back to the butcher, sobbing on her miserable fate. She wanted some of her tails back. The butcher sympathized with her but said that there was nothing that could be done as all the tails had been fed to a cat.

As luck would have it, Bob the two-tailed rat was passing that way. The butcher then had a brilliant idea. He summoned Bob, and pleaded with him to give away one of his tails in order to help a fellow rat. Bob, who was a large-hearted rat, gladly agreed. The butcher then cut one of Bob’s tails and put it on Alice. Now both Alice and Bob had one tail each. And both were happily accepted in the rat society, as the rats realized that their extra tails weren’t really of much use! From that day, all rats were born with only a single tail!