Spoiler Alert: Readers of The Amazing Maurice will know that at the end of the story the sentient rats came to an agreement with the human citizens of Bad Blintz. They would have equal status within the town, with road signs and similar written in rat pictograms. Unsurprisingly the rats also had a postal service with their own small stamps. with perforations nibbled by their own incisors. Do not confuse these rat-nibbled stamps with the so-called rat-nibbled Bath perforated Year of the Prawn Ankh-Morpork definitives; quite different. The stamps came in three values - 1 represented by a raisin, 2 by a potato, and 20 by a candle. By far they are the smallest Discworld stamps measuring only 10 mm square. The two rat stamp issues coincided with the Bad Blintz issues. The first, red, set were limited to just 80 of each value, and were found in 1 in 15 of the Spring Fate LBEs. They were printed in sheets of 315 stamps! 15 columns and 21 rows, with the three values alternating down the sheet. One sheet, successfully perforated and disassembled, would provide more stamps than required for the 80 sets issued.

   .

The second set were printed in green and were the same size and also rat-nibbled. However, some were found wavy edge scissor cut - crinkle cut, perhaps most appropriate for the potato stamp. These are very rare. This time 200 sets were available in the Flaming June LBES. The arrangement of stamps on full sheets is unknown. One further rarity is all three stamps in a se-tenant vertical strip - illustrated. They are perforated between the stamps. These were included in special editions of the Flaming June LBE awarded to those who participated in a forum discussion concerning possible mythical beast stamps. This arrangement does suggest that the full sheet did mirror that of the first rat stamps. This may be the first full colour LBE label.

Well, did these stamps really get perforated by nibbling rats? I hate to disppoint you, but I have it on good authority that it was this home made tool that was used. Sometimes the myth is better than the truth.