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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Environment

Rats don’t cut a rug – they gnaw it instead

Brown rat on a wall.
Brendan Rascius is confused by Alys Fowler’s article about ‘dancing’ rats in her attic. Photograph: Peter Clayton Photography/Getty Images/iStockphoto

Alys Fowler writes about the “dancing” rats in her attic (12 December). British rats must be quite refined, because as a long-suffering neighbour to an untold number of New York rats, I can tell you that the last thing they’re doing is cutting a rug. No, they’re gnawing (the pipes), dragging (pieces of drywall), shedding (fleas), and procreating (rather loudly). I’d kill for a dancing rat.
Brendan Rascius
New York City, US

• With your article about Brenda Lee (14 December), you have a great photo of her rehearsing in London in 1959. She is singing away next to a saxophonist whom you haven’t named in the caption. He is my late cousin, Benny Green, pretty famous in his lifetime, though not as famous as Elvis, who does get his name in another photo caption.
Roberta Planer
London

• Intrigued by the amorous couple’s interest in pegging (This is how we do it, 9 December), I looked up the formal definition, finding it to be “the act of setting a fixed exchange rate between two currencies”. Is this a euphemism, or do they really get off on that? Sometimes I feel so old.
Brian Smith
Berlin, Germany

• What? Christmas movies ranked (14 December) and no Bad Santa?
Barry Norman
Drighlington, West Yorkshire

• Do you have a photograph you’d like to share with Guardian readers? If so, please click here to upload it. A selection will be published in our Readers’ best photographs galleries and in the print edition on Saturdays.

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