Choose the best answer. Read this text to answer questions 1- 5.

    It was a warm Saturday evening Kim and Sarah White left their three-story house open as they watched Britain's Got Talent on TV. Shortly before 10 pm, a curious fox padded into their home in Victoria Park, East London, and made its way upstairs, where their nine-month-old twins Lola and Lily were asleep. The fox attacked the girls on their arms and faces. When Sarah heard the crying, she rushed upstairs. "I went into the room and I saw some blood on Lily's cot," she said. "I thought she'd had a nosebleed. I put on the light and I saw a fox and it wasn't even scared of me, it just looked me straight in the eye."

    As the children were treated in a hospital, where they were in a serious but stable condition, the shocking story spread around the globe, triggering a new panic about urban foxes. Police told local residents they should keep their doors closed in hot weather for their own safety. Neighbours spoke of how foxes creep not merely into their gardens but into their kitchens and living rooms. A fox trap was set, one fox has already been killed.

"... they were in a serious ..." (2nd par).

The underlined word refers to ____