CH 9

Wu Ji didn’t reply on the phone again. Instead, he came straight to the door.

“You really didn’t hear anything last night? My parents live downstairs from you, and the rats were gnawing on the window screen all night!”

Wu Ji looked listless and had two large dark circles under his eyes. During the phone conversation, he had thought that Feng Yi was bullshitting, but now, Feng Yi’s condition didn’t look like he had been disturbed at night.

Feng Yi replied: “I didn’t see any rats when I came back last night. Maybe I slept too soundly and didn’t hear anything. If you hadn’t told me, I would have forgotten about it. The take-out trash hadn’t been put in the processor yet, I just cleaned it up this morning. Didn’t the management hire a rodent control company? It didn’t work?”

“It did!” Wu Ji said angrily. “Apparently, a few underground lairs were blasted, and then the rodents ran up. In broad daylight, some people saw rats running from downstairs to upstairs along the outer wall. Not only in our community, the rat situation is getting worse in the surrounding neighborhoods. It’s so annoying!”

Wu Ji accepted a bottle of pure water from Feng Yi, opened it and took a few sips before continuing: “I don’t think the rats stealing food is such a big deal anymore. In the past two days, everyone has been a little nervous and irritable due to the worsening situation. The slightest thing in the group chat would cause an argument.”

“However, the community supervisor said that the next step is to completely eradicate the rats. Professionals will be hired to deal with them, but some services will have to be paid for separately. I have already put both my parents’ and my apartment on the waiting list for door-to-door extermination. If you need it, you can contact the property manager directly and just sign up.

“Door-to-door extermination?” Feng Yi asked.

“Basically, they come to see if your house has any exposed areas that the rats can take advantage of. The apartment next to mine had someone come to their door last week. Exhaust pipes, air vents, and all kinds of holes are where rats can get in.”

“Because of the material of the outer wall, it’s difficult to seal some holes. The price to seal a hole is about ten to fifteen dollars. Finding the holes is an additional fee, about seventy. One family in the group chat asked someone to seal seven holes, and the total was about one hundred and seventy: seventy for finding the holes plus one hundred for sealing the holes.”

“But I think if the situation can be dealt with once and for all, the money is still worth spending. I heard that those private rodent control companies have raised their prices again, but the people the community supervisor hired should be cheaper. Group discounts and all that.”

“If you’re not sure, you can also ask a professional to come and check. You don’t usually pay attention to the group chat so you might not know. One apartment had asked a professional to come and clean the air conditioner. Since summer is coming, they wanted to clean the air conditioner in advance. The professional came, opened the air vent, and found a pile of rat droppings… holy crap!”

Wu Ji looked at the air vent of the central air conditioner in Feng Yi’s house. “If you are free, you can also make an appointment to clean the air conditioner.”

After speaking, Wu Ji’s face fell and he pointed at his dark circles. Then he raised his finger and pointed above him. “Have you ever heard disco dancing on your ceiling at three in the morning?”

“No,” Feng Yi said.

“I wonder what rats eat these days to get so big; they have no idea of their own weight at all. I don’t know how they got into the ceiling, but they were playing tag left and right. I had to sleep with earplugs! When I woke up in the morning, the antique Zen-carved ceiling that my dad likes so much was cracked!”

“Your family doesn’t have pets, and you don’t have children, so you can use rat poison,” Feng Yi said.

Wu Ji waved his hand dismissively. “You underestimate them too much. Now there are some species that are resistant to the commonly used rat poison. Strong rat poisons are strictly controlled, and most of them are banned for sale. I’m counting on the rat extermination robot now.”

“Didn’t you go to Qian Feiyang to borrow his cat?” Feng Yi asked.

Qian Feiyang was their college classmate and had rented a house in the same community. He didn’t live here at first. Since he loved photography, he took some photo editing jobs before graduating. After graduation, he set up a small photography studio and rented a large apartment in their community. Three months ago, the community caught some stray cats. Like many people in the nearby community, Qian Feiyang went to adopt one.

Wu Ji: “He wouldn’t let me! He said his cat doesn’t catch mice anymore!”

Speaking of this, Wu Ji became angry. “How can a cat born as a stray not catch mice! Someone in the group chat gave him an idea: ‘If you starve it for two meals, it will catch rats by itself’. Qian Feiyang responded with ‘I had the same idea’. Within two days, Qian Feiyang said, ‘I can’t, once it starts crying, I forget whatever I was thinking about’. I can’t understand it at all!”

Wu Ji sighed, “So, I’m still looking forward to the rat-killing robot.”

Feng Yi took out a tea can and handed it over. “Someone gave me two cans, you and Qian Feiyang can share one.”

“What kind of tea is it?” Wu Ji became interested.

His shop at the entrance of the community was called “Auspicious Tea Garden”. Young people liked to drink afternoon tea or find a clean place to study. The elderly went there to drink tea, play chess, and chat. There were also separate tearooms and private rooms.

As soon as Feng Yi took the tea can out, Wu Ji couldn’t care less about the rat situation.

“Some kind of tea from an unknown farm?” Feng Yi didn’t know tea, and Uncle Mute didn’t say what kind of tea it was.

Feng Yi had tried a small amount of it when he had breakfast in the morning, and it was strangely sweet and refreshing. Other than that, he didn’t feel anything. He wasn’t a tea lover.

Wu Ji took it with both hands and looked at it. He was much more serious than when he took the bottle of pure water. The tea can was divided into several layers, only the top layer was filled with tea leaves, and the lower layers were filled with unknown contents; some were powder, some were granules, Wu Ji guessed that it was probably for “reducing the “internal heat” from the newly made tea leaves.

“Could it be a secret native tea-making method?” Wu Ji asked.

“I don’t know. The whole process took about two hours,” Feng Yi said.

“It was ready in two hours?” Wu Ji thought: It seems a little crude.

However, Wu Ji liked all kinds of novel tea-making methods. After smelling it just now, he felt that the tea leaves inside were not inferior.

“The person who made the tea said to brew it after two days,” Feng Yi said.

“Yes, I understand. I will share Qian Feiyang’s share with him when I see him.” Wu Ji carefully put it away.

“By the way, Qian Feiyang and I are going fishing this weekend. Do you want to join us? Uncle Liu from the fishing group in our community mentioned it to me when he was having tea at my shop yesterday. You know there is an ecological reserve not far from Rongcheng. Well, there is a farmhouse outside the reserve. Uncle Liu said it is really nice to spend the weekend there.”

“I plan to take my parents there for two days as there’s been too much chaos lately. Qian Feiyang said he wanted to take pictures, so he also decided to come alone. What about you? My parents will be picking vegetables, which I’m not interested in, so the three of us can go fishing!”

Feng Yi remembered the experience of being dragged fishing in the past. “Fishing? The kind of fishing where you can’t catch a single fish even if you cast the rod a hundred times?”

“Hey, that’s definitely not going to happen this time! Uncle Liu said the fishing over there is awesome!” Wu Ji pulled up a video for Feng Yi to watch.

In the video, the fishing group in the community did indeed get a large haul, and the atmosphere was lively.

Considering his current situation, Feng Yi said, “If I don’t have anything to do on the weekend, I’ll join you. Do we have to bring our own fishing rod?”

“If you have one, bring it, if not, you can rent it later. We’re just going to relax, unlike Uncle Liu and the others who go often, so we can just rent it directly. There are a full set of fishing tools for rent and bait for sale.”

“Okay.”

After Wu Ji left, Feng Yi checked the various vents in the house, but saw no signs of rats. Looking at the group chat, the waiting list for door-to-door rodent extermination was full until next week. Feng Yi searched the Internet and found that all the rodent control companies were very busy. He also needed to make an appointment, and he wasn’t sure when it would be his turn. He temporarily gave up looking for a rodent exterminator to come to his house. After a while, Feng Yi searched on his phone: “the natural enemy of mice”

Search showed:

[Cats, Snakes, Eagles, Ferrets, People, etc.]

Feng Yi searched again: “the natural enemy of snakes”

Search showed:

[Eagles, Honey Badgers, Mongooses, Humans, etc.]

Feng Yi touched his chin. “Humans are indeed at the top of the food chain!”

Suddenly, there was a sense of relief in his heart. He was not a snake, but a human, the existence at the top of the food chain! What was he afraid of!!

Putting that aside, Feng Yi planned to drive to the supermarket to stock up on goods. Since the old butler said that he would undergo small changes in the coming days, it was better for him to limit his outdoor activities over the next two days. If the change was too big, he would not go on Wu Ji’s weekend farmhouse trip.

He put on a mask and took the elevator directly to the underground parking lot. He hadn’t been home for the past two days, so his car hadn’t been used. As he unlocked the car door and prepared to get in, Feng Yi suddenly stopped.

Closing the car door, he opened the trunk and pulled out a reinforced long-handled clamp-like tool from inside. He had bought this picker two years ago and it had only been used less than five times, always sitting in the trunk. After thinking about it, he took a pair of gloves out of the glove box and put them on. He walked over to the right front wheel of the car, took two steps back, and stomped his feet. At the same time, he quickly stretched out his hand holding the picker!

“Squeak!”