How did the rat get on board you might ask?

Victoria Rat is the type of animal that follows her nose to food.   She lived in the port of Victoria, Canada where there are lots of ships and ships are full of food for the many people who work on them.  A floating banquet! 

 

Victoria comes from a long family history of ancestors who jumped onto ships in search of food.  She learned from them where to go to find food.  If you were hungry, wouldn’t you go to the place with the most food?

Some of Victoria’s ancestors came from ships that traveled from England.  In fact, her hungry grandfather had climbed onto a sailing ship from Newcastle just looking for a quick snack when the ship set sail.  He ended up in Sydney, Australia (after having a brief holiday in Panama when the ship went through the big canal!).  

Panama had too many rats, which meant too much competition for food so Grandpa Rat jumped on the next ship out.  How he got from Australia to Canada is another story!

Because it took such a long time to sail around the world, by the time they got to Canada, as well as the rest of the ship’s inhabitants, the rats had nearly run out of food.  So they followed their noses and got off the ship.    

Can you find Victoria hiding in the JR dry store amongst the flour?  You might see just the tip of her tail.  The JR has heaps of food stored to feed the all the scientists and crew on board.  Every day there are three cookie breaks so she often has lots of cookie crumbs to eat on the floor.  She won’t go hungry here.

The Camp Boss uses one sack of flour each day for all the baking.  Imagine baking for 123 people every day!  How much flour does your family use a day for baking?