"Is there anything to eat?" Hong Xiaoduo asked. Then there was no need to rush to kill the birds. Her guilt about waking up late and letting the children go hungry lessened a little.
The seven little heads nodded in unison. If they hadn't wanted to wait for their mother to eat together, they wouldn't have waited so long for the stew to cook.
"Yes," Hong Xiaoduo nodded in agreement. "The kids are good; they can manage to get food on their own."
The next moment, she suddenly froze, as if she had thought of something, and looked at the children and asked, "Did you dig the cooked beans and corn kernels out of a mouse hole?"
"Yes, it was my eldest brother who thought of it. He said there were good things in the rat holes by the edge of the field, and we actually found some when we dug. There were so many, so many that we put them in bags. We can eat them for several meals," Yuheng said, pointing to his eldest brother.
Hong Xiaoduo raised her hand and pinched her forehead, saying, "Don't eat that, throw it away. If you're hungry, just bear with it for now. I'll go hunt some birds for you."
"Mother, why?" Tianxuan asked, puzzled. The other children also looked confused.
The beans and corn kernels that were dug out were all very good. The mice were very clever; they only picked out the plumpest grains to steal back to their burrows.
"Because rats are very dirty, they crawl into sewers, latrines and all sorts of places, including cemeteries and rotting corpses. They carry a lot of viruses and bacteria and are hosts for many disease pathogens. Their feces and the food they have eaten can transmit viruses to people."
"So, if we know for sure that the grain was dug out of a rat hole, it's definitely not edible," Hong Xiaoduo explained to the children.
The children seemed to understand, yet also seemed not to.
"Mother? When we're starving, we'll catch rats, skin them, and eat them, and we're fine, we've never gotten sick," Tian Shu said softly.
As soon as he finished speaking, the other children nodded in agreement again.
My goodness, Hong Xiaoduo doesn't even know how to describe her feelings anymore.
She didn't feel disgusted, only heartbroken. A group of poor children were eating rat meat just to survive and fill their stomachs, and she hated the evil people who abused them.
"You're lucky you're not sick. I'm not trying to scare you, but rat-borne diseases can be very serious. Not only will those who eat them get sick and die, but it can also cause a major plague that can infect many people and cause many deaths."
I don't care what you were like before, but now you're following me, and you're not allowed to eat anything you dig out of the mouse hole anymore.
"Of course, if you don't believe me and want to eat what's in that jar, I won't stop you." Hong Xiaoduo patiently explained the seriousness of eating things from the rat hole, but fearing they wouldn't believe her, she could only add a hint of threat.
Disobedient, yet you still want to eat? Fine, then I won't take care of you anymore.
Although the children were young, they all understood the implication of her words and looked at Tian Shu with some trepidation...
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