Mrs F awoke the next morning feeling refreshed. It must have been the exertion of the night before that made her sleep very well. That, coupled with A's hospitality where she spread out a beautiful bedsheet and even included a candle in the corner of the room, made Mr and Mrs F feel as if it was their honeymoon suite.
After breakfast, it was time to head home and face the inevitable again. Mr F bought some rat glue to which Mrs F expressed her disappointment. Rat glue = trapped rat ≠ dead rat. Furthermore, how would Mr F get rid of the rat if and when it gets trapped on the glue?? When they stepped cautiously into the house, it seemed that everything was alright - there was no sign of the rat. Mrs F was secretly hoping that the rat had gone. Mr F then literally forced Mrs F into facing the rat with him. She was, however, not ready to see it again, nor face her fears. This ensued into an argument, but thankfully after calming down, Mr F braved the front himself. He put the glue onto all the doorways so that they could see where Mr Rat was going. Work done for the day, they headed out for a picnic.
That night when they returned, they noticed that some of the glue near the main door had a smudge. Upon looking closely, there were also traces of blood. Mrs F felt sorry for the rat, instead of ending its life quickly, they had instead hurt it. This also meant that the rat was still in the house. Gasp! So much for her hopes of it being a figment of their imagination. That night, she went to sleep with a stick next to her bed. Even if she didn't dare kill the rat, she could still shoo it away with the stick.
The next day, Mr and Mrs F went to a hardware store to purchase some things for the rat fiasco. Their theory was that the rat might have entered through the main door since the gap at the bottom was pretty big. After some unsuccessful attempts at looking for wooden boards to seal the gap, they ended up at S to see if they had anything useful. Guessing that a place like that would sell rat poison, Mrs F urged Mr F to ask the salesman if they had any. To their suprise, the salesman was standing at the exact location of the poisons. There was another customer there trying to decide which kind to by. "Apparently we're not the only one having rat problems," Mrs F said.
After some deliberation, they settled on a slightly expensive version of rat poison; Mrs F had faith that something costlier would be more effective. They went off armed with a wooden board they had picked up in an alley beside one of the stores they had gone to earlier. On the way out of S, they found a construction bin which had bits of ceramic which they thought would be useful for doing the job. Feeling like scavengers themselves, they picked up a few pieces and headed home.
Mr F spent the rest of the evening sealing the gap at the door with the ceramic pieces and placing rat poison all around the house. He did not want Mrs F to panic again and wanted her to have peace of mind, especially since the previous day's panic had made their unborn child very quiet that day. Mrs F was very grateful that Mr F was putting in so much effort into easing her worries about being "attacked" by the rat.
Feeling slightly more relaxed, Mr and Mrs F went back to the living room and watched a movie together. It was now a waiting game - would the rat appear? Would it eat the poison? Time would tell...
-------- End of Chapter 2--------
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