The yard’s undisturbed; no evidence of the rats today. No digging in the plant pots for bulbs, no fresh droppings. And no sight of them plunging into the drain and out, or poking their noses from the split black wooden box built around the pipes in the corner of the yard.
Are they dead? Or are they nesting, the three of them, in some combination working to produce the next generation of rats: imagine it! Another generation, born in the split black box and crawling out! September’s their last month for breeding, and there’s 3 of them. But perhaps they’re dead instead. Dead and rotting in the split black box.
Should I open its cover? Should I hammer open one of the black planks? My Visitor says no. You’ll get bitten, she says. I want to shine a torch into the box, but she says no to that, too. Are they dead? Rotting? We should smell them soon, the three dead rats in the black box. Three rats who crawled in, ate the poison and died.
Meanwhile, the yard, ratless. Plants in their new pots (the old ones split). Scattered earth dug out by the rats, looking for bulbs. Scattered yellow balls of plantfood, too. And the birdseed holder, from which the seed fell that brought the rats. That, and the packet of seed that was full of hatched insects crawling around that I threw into the outhouse. It split, and the insects grew wings and circled about it, and I didn’t want to go near. And then we were away, and that’s when the rats came, 3 of them, crawling about.
The ratless yard, but still the insects that circle its middle as they would do in a room. And fat flies that buzz around the black box – what do they mean? Dead rats, 3 of them, among the pipes? Dead, rotting rats?
Lars Iyer's Blog 