Letter: Fat brown rat has a taste for melon
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Your support makes all the difference.Sir: I was interested to read Shirley Hanslip's letter ('Smelling a rat when it comes to compost', 11 June) about rats only being partial to meat, pastry, plate scrapings, etc.
Last year I, too, had a compost heap on to which I religiously put only vegetable waste, fruit trimmings, grass cuttings etc. I began to wonder how the heap appeared to rot down so quickly without producing much heat or compost.
The answer came one day when I went to put a bowl of peelings on it and the whole pile moved - there, sitting on top of the pile, happily gorging itself on a discarded melon skin, was a gigantic fat brown rat. Needless to say, I don't have a compost heap any longer.
Yours sincerely,
ELIZABETH PARKER
London, SE21
12 June
(Photograph omitted)
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