I did not think anything was amiss when rats no longer
scurried across our living room, their movement only captured by the corner of
the eyes.
This was because the rats tended to disappear, or reduce
in number, from time to time: victims of poison or the stray cats that now and
again made their home under the water tank at our backyard. Perhaps I should
have been alarmed when less and less rats darted away from my headlights as my
car felt its way into its customary parking space beside the large water tank
where the charging units stood, regal, blinking in an electronic symphony. I
was also not alarmed when first the compound and then the house proper was
saturated by the stench of putrefying meat. I was not too bothered and easily
laid the reason for the deaths squarely on a highly efficient poison.
