Are the rats dying? I'm watching them from the kitchen window, I tell W. on the phone, emerging from the black wooden box constructed over the pipes that they've taken as their nest. Three rats – two large ones and one small, all brown, their heads poking out of the box to sniff the air before sliding, as though greased, into the drain. And then up again a moment later, snout first, sniffing …
They're going into the drain to drink, I think, I tell W. They must have eaten the poison the pest control man laid down in their box the other morning. It dehydrates them. They crave water. I think they might be dying now.
Rats eat in little bits, the pest control man said, I tell W. A little, and they seem to wait, and they eat a litle more. This means the poison must seem innocuous to them, neutral. It has to be kept deliberately weak. It acts slowly – over one to three days, the pest control man said. And how many days is it now?, W. asks. A couple of days, I tell him. My God, he says.
If they die underneath the flat, I'm in trouble, I tell W. Imagine the smell, rising up from beneath the floorboards … My God, says W.
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