A Neugrabener poison tester had many loyal, poor beagle dogs. One of it was particularly bad: emaciated, sore eyes, at the end of strength after test after test. Then the experimenter thought of hanging it on the hook. But the Beagle noticed it, forced its way past the barbed wire and fled to the Alster. There he hoped to find a place of freedom, without poison.

After walking for a while, he saw a monkey in a narrow air cargo box from Mauritius - fallen from a truck, addressed to a would-be researcher from Bremen.

"Well, what are you yapping, monkey?" asked the beagle. "Oh," said the monkey, "they want to get into my brain: wire it up, chip it and in the end it's cut up. So I rocked so that my wooden prison fell." – "You know what?" said the Beagle, "come with me to the city of freedom, to the Alster. No one will chase after us and we will become musicians. Come with me and joyn me. I play the lute and you hit the kettledrum."

The monkey was satisfied and together they moved on. It wasn't long before a rabbit climbed out of a garbage can. "What's the matter with you, why are you getting out of the bin and looking so scared?" asked the Beagle. "Who can be funny when you live in a tight box and they want to touch your eyes for a new cream? So I pretended to be dead and ended up in the plastic surgeon's bin. Where should I go?" asked the rabbit. "Go with us to the Venice of the North. You know how to whistle and knock, so you can become a town musician."

The three laboratory fugitives then passed a breeding facility. A rat sat on the gate and screamed with all her strength. "You scream so loud," said the Beagle, "what are you going to do?" – "I always had to have new children. Everyone found their way into the glass boxes. Now I'm old and worthless, so they wanted to feed me to the snakes. I went through the crack in the door and on to the gate and don't know how to go back or ahead! "Said the rat. "Now I'm screaming at the top of my lung as long as I can" – "Oh what, you Incisor," said the Beagle, "you'd better go away with us, we're going to the water, to the fresh breeze. You can find something better than death everywhere. You have a good voice and if we make music together, it´s on of a kind."

The rat-lady accepted the suggestion, and all four of them left together.

But they could not reach the place of freedom in one day and in the evening came to a forest where they wanted to spend the night. The beagle and the hare lay down under a large tree, the monkey and the rat lady got into the branches. The monkey jumped to the top where it was safest for him. Before falling asleep, he looked once more at all four winds. Then he thought he saw a spark burning in the distance and called to his companions that there might be a house close by, because there was a light.

The Beagle said: "So we have to get up and go, because the hostel is bad here. It still smells like a laboratory."

The monkey said: "A few fruits instead of dry pellets would do me good too."

So they made their way to the area where the light was and soon saw it shimmering brighter and it got bigger and bigger until they came to a bright, lighted house with big cars in front of it.

The beagle, being the largest, approached the window and looked inside. "What do you see, sniff?" asked the rat lady. "What do I see?" replied the Beagle, "A set table with nice food and drink and the white coats are sitting on it and indulging in comfort: the poison tester, the head drill, the mouse mass breeder and the beauty tormenter. They were looking for us and are now having a good time with feast and drink!"

"That would be something for us!" said the monkey. "Yes, yes, oh, if we were only there!" dreamed the Beagle. Then the animals advised how to start it in order to chase out the white coats and finally found a remedy. The beagle had to stand with his front feet on the window, the monkey jump on the beagle's back, the rabbit climb on the monkey and finally the rat darted up and sat on the rabbit's head. As that happened, they began to make music together at a sign:

The beagle howled, the monkey roared, the rabbit knocked and the rat lady whistled. Then they rushed through the window into the room so that the panes rattled. The white coats jumped up at the terrible shouting, they meant nothing more than a ghost coming in, and in the greatest fear fled into the forest in their big cars. Now the four journeymen sat down at the table, took what was left and ate to their heart's content.

When the four minstrels had finished, they switched off the light and looked for a place to sleep, each according to his nature and comfort. The beagle lay down on the doormat, the monkey sat down in front of the stove, where it was almost as warm as in his distant home. The rabbit rested in a hollow in the soft grass in front of the door, the rat lady made herself comfortable in the gutter under the stars. And because they were tired from their long walk, they soon fell asleep.

When midnight was over and the white coats saw from a distance that there were no more lights on in the house and that everything seemed quiet, the poison tester said: "We shouldn't have let ourselves be ripped off. That was just animal material, we'll get it back! "And so he instructed the first to go and examine the house. The skull drill sent off found everything quiet, went into the kitchen to light a light, and because he considered the monkey's glowing, fiery eyes to be living coals, he held a stick of sulfur to it so that it should catch fire. A shadow appeared in the firelight, a sewn- together monster, half human half creature. The skull drill was full of fear and anxiety. And so he ran away.

"You want to have seen a Frankenstein? Oh, I'll do it," and the surgeon set off. Sneaked up to the house quietly, the beagle recognized him by the smell long ago. The Beagle was nimble, not locked in, flew like the wind around the surgeon, first left, then right, then again the other way around. The shoelace was quickly tied and the surgeon was twisted to the ground.

The beagle came up with a growl: "Do you know that I can bite you now?" but he's just a poor wretch, it's not worth it. "There is no such thing as a test subject who speaks!" stuttered the surgeon and stumbled panicked into the dark.

"You stupid, what are you doing?" teased the poison tester and led the way towards the house. But he didn't even come close, the arrogant show-off. He freezes and stands like a stone, in total shock as huge eyes stare out of nowhere. He is familiar with the deep red, he has already known thousands of such eyes. They belonged to the tortured rabbits. For the first time in his life he felt a burden on his shoulders like never before. At one and the same time he felt the collective pain of all his victims, that of the thousands of knockers. It was just a small, battered rabbit, whose tired eyes were reflected in the pond in the moonlight. The poison tester's legs turned mushy. He backed away, very slowly from the water - his face grew paler and paler. Running was no longer possible, the burden of the extinguished eyes weighed too heavily. But it was the last time he saw those eyes - mentally he already checked the employment agencys website.

The mouse mass breeder was the last to put his feet in front of the door. But the rat, who had been awakened from sleep by the noise and woke up, squealed so shrilly through the gutter that the windows and ears rattled. Then the man ran back to the white coats and said: "Up on the roof there is the judge and shouted as loud as thunder: 'Bring me the charlatans, their past weighs heavily!' that I got away."

From now on, the would-be researchers did not dare to go any further into the house. The four musicians liked it so much that they didn't want to leave. Especially when they heard that this city of freedom is teeming with laboratories, that new research prisons are being built there and that animal welfare is going out the window.