Rat in a bag

We live on the end of a terrace. Our street is a cut through from the bottom of the High Street to a big estate & the local dene park, so we get a lot of through-traffic: dog walkers mostly; the occasional horse rider; commonly pissed-up weekend revellers on their noisy way home.

As a result, the garden picks up a lot of detritus. Pruning the hedge often yields treasure: I've had perfectly serviceable mugs & pint glasses out of it, as well as the less exciting crisp packets & spent Fosters cans.

As I've probably mentioned before, the wind fair whips & swirls around both the garden & the yard, so it's not uncommon to open the curtains to find a plastic bag in the middle of the lawn, which is exactly why Wednesday morning's weather report was "No snow, placcy bag on the lawn".

I'll admit I was a bit surprised it hadn't moved by Thursday morning, but then it wasn't very windy. Still there on Friday. I thought nothing of it other than "I'll sort that tomorrow".

So hubby heads out this morning & picks it up. "Ah" he says, flatly. "It's got a dead rat in it". Certainly explains why it wasn't blowing around...

It was a big fella too. Very deliberately chucked over the wall, but deliberately for us? We have had a rat problem in the past but after hubby's stirling poisoning work expunged the buggers from inside the walls, this winter has been the 1st in ages mercifully free from random scratching & scurryings.

& I've not seen rats in the garden since unearthing one when turning the compost the other year. Man, that one was huge. I don't know who jumped higher - me or she.

But a rat in a bag is just odd. Does someone think it's ours? Is it a message from some local low-rent mafioso we've unwittingly dissed? Is it just more passing detritus? & if so, who the hell wanders around with a dead rat in a bag (apart from Tom from Father Ted)?

Weird.