to blame

Ming Xia came back with a bag of dried wormwood, and saw a second-hand black off-road vehicle parked in front of the pet shop, the front of the car was sunken, and there were a few obvious scratches on the door.

Ming Xia looked into the shop, and saw Tu Qing squatting in front of the hamster's cage with his unkempt hair eating pancakes. While feeding himself, he tore the pancakes into small strips to feed the hamsters.Looking at it from the side, the frequency of chewing by one person and one mouse was actually synchronized.

Ming Xia couldn't help but laugh, "You're back? Where did the car get scratched?"

"Don't mention it," Tu Qing said weakly, "I took a small road, and it's difficult to walk...Did you sleep well last night? It's your first time staying here. To be honest, I'm quite worried."

Tu Qing has a baby face with round eyes.When he speaks seriously, he often gives people the feeling that a child is pretending to imitate an adult on purpose.In the past, all the female students in Ming Xia's class said that Tu Qing was very cute, but after seeing this boy crawling into the grass to catch bugs and sitting on the curb drinking beer with his bare feet, Ming Xia felt that the so-called beauty has two pictures. As for the face, it is also applicable to Tu Qing.

Ming Xia was a little dazed and didn't know how to understand Tu Qing's uneasy words for a while, so he hesitated and said, "Someone came to check last night and looked at your ID. Other things... Blame my negligence. A hamster got out."

"Run away? Didn't come back all night? You shouldn't..." Tu Qing got up and walked around the hamster cage. When he looked up and saw Ming Xia's tangled and guilty expression, he hurriedly said, "Hey, hey, don't worry. .My pets here count as one, and they all know their way.”

Ming Xia, "..."

"Really, I didn't lie to you." Tu Qing didn't care much about the hamster's absence at night, "The stray cats and dogs on this street all know them, and they won't take them home for supper. There are not many people on the street next to it, and it will not be picked up by others. When it has had enough waves, it will run back by itself."

Based on Ming Xia's limited common sense about animals, it is unlikely that a hamster will know its way, but Tu Qing's attitude is so firm, Ming Xia can't help but have a little extravagant hope that maybe that little thing will really go home by itself maybe.

After eating the pancakes, Tu Qing stretched his waist long, "Oh, I can't do it, my waist is going to be broken, I need to catch up on sleep..." Before he finished speaking, he suddenly froze, wrinkled his nose and sniffed in Ming Xia's direction. After smelling it, "what's the smell?"

Ming Xia dodged back for a while, feeling almost annoyed in his heart, "Who knows what dirty things are hidden in your store." In fact, when he thought about it carefully, he could smell this smell when he woke up in the middle of the night, no, he had to go Pushing forward, there seems to be this smell in the store before closing last night.

Tu Qing frowned, and looked up and down suspiciously at Ming Xia, "Is there anything in the store... Where did you get this dirty smell from?"

Ming Xia, "...be careful with your wording."

Tu Qing walked around him twice, and found the dried wormwood he was holding in his hand, "Give it to old man Bi?"

"The owner of the bookstore next door gave it to me." Ming Xia didn't know what his last name was, "He told him to cook it and take a bath."

"Let's go clubbing." Tu Qing obviously trusted the veteran cadres, "Old man Bi knows a lot. He used to be a university professor."

Tu Qing's family background is not good, and he came out to work to make a living after graduating from high school, so he highly respects educated people.However, his "learned" has a certain scope, especially referring to people with profound literary literacy.Those who study industrial design like Ming Xia are not included in this list at all.Therefore, for a long time, Ming Xia thought he was a lover of literature, until one day he found a bunch of books under his bed such as "History of World Weapons Development", "Illustrated Ancient Weapons in Asia", "World Authoritative Firearms" , "History of War in Europe"... Then I suddenly realized that this kid's so-called literary hobby was nothing but Ye Gong's love for dragons.

The two of them were discussing what time to cook the wormwood when they heard a woman's voice outside the door shouting, "Xiao Tu! Your cat is doing something again! Come out and take care of it!"

Ming Xia was still thinking about which one it would be, but Tu Qing had rushed out impatiently, muttering while running, "I said that the beauty was so good when I came back...it's not scientific at all..."

Ming Xia put down the things in his hands and followed them out, seeing many people appearing on the street that was still deserted just now.A few familiar neighbors who opened a shop nearby, and a group of boys and girls who just got off the sightseeing bus gathered around the old sycamore tree in the square to watch the excitement.

From a long distance, Ming Xia saw the beauty standing on a thick tree branch, with her tail raised, and the fur all over her body bursting out, as if she was going to fight someone desperately.Around it gathered an unknown number of big cats and kittens, jumping up and down in chaos.Ming Xia didn't understand cat language, but felt that these cats were frightened by something, and each of them felt like an enemy.

Tu Qing squeezed in from the crowd, and called softly, "Beauty?"

Seeing him, the beauty seemed to calm down a little, and then stretched out its paws and flicked twice on the tree branch, pulling something off.

With a snap, the piece fell to the ground.

There was an exclamation in the crowd.

Ming Xia squeezed in from the crowd, and immediately saw the blood-stained... residual limb that fell on the ground.It seemed to be half of the hind leg of a rat animal, together with a part of the short tail, it was less than half the size of a palm in total, with some grayish-yellow fur on it.

Ming Xia looked up at the beauty walking around on the branch of the tree and the group of restless stray cats. She didn't understand the beauty's intention of doing this, did she deliberately leave a mouthful of leftovers to scare people?

This was not a horrible incident, but it made most of the people present feel a little unwell.Especially the group of teenagers who just got out of the car looked at the cats on the tree with very tangled eyes. There was a love for stuffed animals in their eyes, but also a fear of the animal's bloodthirsty nature.

Only Tu Qing squatted on the ground and carefully pulled the stump back and forth several times, then he straightened his waist, sighed and said, "Don't be afraid, don't be afraid, it wasn't bitten by a cat."

The spectators whispered to each other.Ming Xia could see that most of these people (including himself) thought that Tu Qing was trying to excuse his cat.Then, he heard a middle-aged man next to him say: "It's not a cat bite mark, look at this place, there are a few small holes here, more like claw marks left by raptors like eagles."

Boss Bi, who runs the bookstore, also squeezed in. He looked carefully at the things on the ground, then looked up at the restless cat on the tree, and said with certainty, "The cat didn't do it. Let's not talk about our Huaxin. Whether cats in the street can catch mice or not, it is not a cat's habit to take the prey to the tree to eat."

The onlookers also turned on Sherlock Holmes mode one after another. Some said that the blood was dry, which shows that the little thing had been killed for at least a few hours; Well, it must be the eagles in the woods over there flying out to look for food; some people swear that they have seen big owls nesting in the old house over there, and it must be the owls who did it.

After watching the excitement, the crowd sighed and dispersed.Tu Qing brought a shovel from the store, dug a hole under the plane tree, and buried Bei Bei, who was only half left.

The beauty stood on the tree and howled, causing the other cats to meow too.

When Tu Qing got up, he whispered to Ming Xia: "The beauty knows who the murderer is, but she can't beat her and save Bei Bei, so she is extremely guilty." He was taken aback for a moment, "...why?"

Ming Xia looked him up and down, "Can you still understand cat language?"

Tu Qing looked up at the beauty on the tree, and pretended to sigh deeply, "That's not true. After being with animals for a long time, you will become psychic."

Ming Xia, "..."

Ming Xia knew that he was in a bad mood, so she patted his shoulder and was about to say a few words of comfort when she heard a "click" and something wet fell to his feet.

It was a lump of bird droppings.

Followed by another lump.It seemed as if a gate had suddenly opened in the sky, and bird droppings fell down with a crackling sound.The street suddenly became chaotic, pedestrians screamed and avoided, Ming Xia and Tu Qing fled back to the pet shop with their heads in their arms, looked out in shock, and the expressions of both of them changed in the next second, "What's going on?! "

The sky was still very clear when I got up early, but I don't know when it was covered with a layer of gray mist.The mist spread from west to east like flowing water, and the color gradually deepened.The wind was howling, and there was a kind of awe that a storm was coming.

At the entrance of the pet shop, several little girls who hid under the shed screamed, "What is it? So many?!"

Ming Xia also found dense black shadows hidden in the dense fog, and the first sentence that came to mind was: locusts crossing the border.Then he realized that it could not be a locust. At such a height, it could only be a bird with a body similar to an eagle.

"It should have come from Xishan." Tu Qing also squeezed beside Ming Xia and looked out, "What happened to Xishan... It didn't mean it was a small-scale earthquake... Oh, I'll go, what's going on? ...all come in, all come in..."

Tu Qing's complexion changed drastically, and he rushed to the door of the pet shop and dragged in the little girls who were avoiding the bird droppings.Before the door had time to close, there was already a crackling sound coming from above the corridor shed.

Ming Xia hurriedly closed the window, and the moment the lock was closed, a big gray-haired bird slammed into the glass window with a bang.A pair of fierce round eyes stared at Ming Xia for a moment, and the bird body slowly slid down the glass.

Ming Xia hadn't had time to breathe a sigh of relief when he heard a crash, the porch outside the door collapsed, and countless large gray-white birds descended from the sky, scrambling towards the window.

Several little girls screamed in shock, Tu Qing put his back against the door, and shouted at the top of his voice, "Ming Xiaoliu! Give me a hand!"

Ming Xia pushed the girls behind, "Go help!" She rushed to the front desk as fast as she could, opened the drawer and rummaged wildly.He remembered that when he got up early to open the door, he threw the remote control of the rolling shutter in the drawer, why the more anxious he was, the more he couldn't find it?

The little girls also came to their senses, and rushed over with pale faces to help Tu Qing open the door.

Under the half-collapsed porch, a big gray-white bird hopped desperately towards the door, but because of the relatively short distance, it was not as powerful as before.Even so, in the few minutes it took Ming Xia to find the remote control of the rolling shutter, a piece of the glass window had been smashed, and two big birds jostled around trying to get in immediately, but they got stuck together. Living.

The head resembled an owl, the bright red beak, the two extremely fierce sharp feathers above the round eyes, and the sharp black claws that made harsh scratching sounds on the glass window - Ming Xia had never seen this kind of bird before.

The glass made an overwhelmed clicking sound.

The youngest girl cried in fright.Tu Qing guessed what he was going to do, and yelled at him while pressing against the door desperately, "It's in the drawer! I saw it just now!"

With a loud crash, the shed on the side near the window also collapsed, raising dust all over the sky, blocking the pedestrians running and howling outside the window and the tidal gray birds from sight.

Ming Xia finally touched the remote control and pressed the switch with trembling hands.Outside the doors and windows, the rolling shutters hummed and began to slowly descend.

The gray and white bird bodies were densely packed outside the glass window, and the glass window also made the sound of shattering again.Seeing that the two bird heads were about to come in through the enlarged window opening, Ming Xia didn't care about being afraid, picked up the mop and rushed over, desperately pushing the two big birds that were about to squeeze in out of the window opening .

The shutters came down inch by inch at a slow but firm speed, pressing on the thumping bird, and then continued to move down while the gray bird struggled and squirmed.The gray bird slammed into the rolling gate tirelessly, its sharp claws scraping across the metal, making a piercing sound.

The roller shutter finally lowered to the lowest point, and the last gap slowly closed, and the lock buckle made a reassuring click, and was fastened tightly.

There were still knocking sounds outside the window, but everyone in the room couldn't help but breathe a sigh of relief.But the situation outside the gate is not so smooth.When the rolling gate was halfway down, it was forced to stop because the wings of the gray bird churned into the slideway. After being forced to start, the rolling gate dragged the gray bird's body down with difficulty, and the gray bird desperately Struggling and screaming piercingly.This scream was like a signal for help, more gray birds swarmed in, and even a few got between the rolling shutter door and the glass door, like pieces of rags that increased resistance, stuck firmly on the two doors between.

Two feet above the ground, the rolling gate finally... stuck.