"On certain nights, behind some of your favorite restaurants, roving groups of dog owners set their posse of pooches loose on urban rodents".

"The sound of a rat screaming in the jaws of a terrier is the same sound that a stuffed squeaky toy makes.

It seems so obvious. Of course the toys sound that way, because that sound awakens something deep in a docile dog’s neurons that says: Shake it. Shake it till it’s dead.

It’s Saturday night. Flavia and Jigs, a duo of mother-daughter border terriers, are shaking a rat. It is already dead. On one side of the alley wall in a tony part of Northwest Washington, young people are drinking espresso martinis. On the other, a rogue group of dog owners is taking the city’s rat problem into their own hands, and their dogs’ mouths."

Maura Judkis and Jabin Botsford report for the Washington Post September 13, 2023. [2]