The photographs are from 17 September. They show rodents on the municipal car park between the "Bunjakovec" shopping centre and the "J. H. Pestalozzi" primary school in Centar. Alive and dead. They were published by the residents' initiative "In Defence of Bunjakovec", which called for a response from the municipality, the inspectorate and Mayor Goran Gerasimovski.

The following Monday, an emergency pest control operation is scheduled in Centar.

The order of events says everything

Residents photograph. Residents publish. Residents name who is responsible. Then the municipal operation arrives. That is the model, and it works - but it works backwards.

Pest control is a routine municipal obligation with a plan and a schedule. It should not have to be triggered after parents photograph a rat fifty metres from the entrance to a primary school. When a measure is called "emergency", it means the routine one failed somewhere.

Not the first time, and not one neighbourhood

The same problem has been reported in Kapištec and in Debar Maalo. That is no longer a local occurrence in one car park - it is a pattern across several neighbourhoods in the same municipality.

The location is what makes the story sharper than it sounds. A car park directly beside a primary school, in a central city municipality, with children walking past it every day. This is not the outskirts, and it is not abandoned ground.

Monday's emergency treatment will deal with what is visible today. The question left open is why the routine one did not prevent it - and whether anyone will ask to see the schedule it is supposed to follow.