The yard's undisturbed, I tell W.; 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 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 black box and crawling out! September's their last month for breeding, and there's three of them. But perhaps they're dead instead. Dead and rotting in their black box nest.
Should I open its cover? Should I hammer open one of the black planks? Are they dead? Rotting? I should smell them soon, the three dead rats in the black box nest. Three rats who crawled in, ate the poison and died. But perhaps they crawled under the flat to die. Perhaps they crawled in through the hole in the wall where the pipes enter the flat and have died there, under the floorboards.
Meanwhile, the yard, ratless. No more droppings. Fat flies that buzz around the black box – what do they mean? Dead rats, three of them, among the pipes? Dead, rotting rats?
Lars Iyer's Blog 