This year's Mister and Miss Zodiac competition came with a few challenges for the people organizing the event. Rats aren't the most popular of species, even though they're seen in a better light in the recent century. While they were more people who were wanting to convert into rat Animalians than there were chickens or pigs, they weren't a very common choice. But there were quite a lot of rat Animalians anyways, mostly because of the large size of the Piper clan. As such, there was a lot of eliminating that had to be done first. With the Year of the Dog, they were able to narrow it down to the different breeds of dogs represented. Because of the Piper clan, most of the participants were Brown Rats, obviously too many to work with for the Best of Breed stage of the competition. Therefore, the preliminary round was primarily about eliminating the surplus competitors.
It took some time to figure out what would be the best way to fairly test the rats while keeping true to the nature of their zodiac sign. Tests of strength didn't seem appropriate here. The rat was one of the more intellectual members of the Chinese zodiac. They needed something to test each contestant's wits while still remaining exciting and removing enough players.
Eventually, they came up with the idea of a maze. Not a simple labyrinth like the one Jack Piper made his way through last winter. This maze took up three floors of a building set up for this event. The 'building' was actually a grid made up of steel beams in which large boxes can be inserted and removed, those boxes making up the rooms inside. The boxes had doors that lead to other rooms if they're lined up right. There were trapdoors with ropes that the rats use to climb up or down. There were also plenty of dead ends that could cost precious time. And because of the modular design of the box rooms, the maze could be rearranged after each participant was finished.
But it wasn't enough to simply find their way through the maze. In the final room, there was one last test. The last room was an escape room, a room they'd only be able to leave if they've solved the various clues in the room which would lead to the code needed to open the final door. The puzzles for the clues weren't extremely hard, but they could be time-consuming if the rats weren't quick-witted enough. And considering how much time it could take them to go through the maze to reach this room, they didn't have a lot of time to waste. The door to the escape room had been sprayed with a strong smell like cheese to help the rats find it, assuming they don't take any wrong turns.
The preliminary round was quite challenging, though not impossible to do. It certainly helped whittle out the overwhelming number of rats that were competing for the Mister and Miss Zodiac titles. Among the more notable contestants that managed to pass were Milly and Lenny Tillman. Lenny had a little tougher time getting through the doors, but mice and rats are capable of collapsing their skeletons to pass through holes, though there's obviously a limit for Animalians. That also allowed Jack and Mary Piper to pass this round, despite being much larger than the average rat. Everyone was interested to see how the rivalry between these two couples would play out. And the next event to thin the herd would be the Best in Breed stage.