Why not own a creature you can stroke and cuddle and tease with a piece of string?

BBC: Exotic pets: Why do Americans keep dangerous animals?

While he waits, a chain-smoking captain, Salih Yilmaz, busies himself with a plastic bottle and a piece of string, fishing for calamari to serve in his restaurant.

BBC: The perfect trip: Turkey

Four decades of arse parked inside a piece of string.

NEWYORKER: The Dog

Early research involved a colleague lying in a deckchair in the night-time open air with a piece of string to measure the meteors, while he observed electromagnetic signals on a cathode-ray tube in a nearby hut.

ECONOMIST: Bernard Lovell | The

On this back side of the island, the West Maui Mountains exert themselves and push the road around like a piece of string, tight switchbacks yield to long swooping arcs that bring me deep into valleys and then shove me back out toward the coast.

CNN: Driving Maui's wild highway

She takes one jade bangle, a light piece clearly designed for a woman quite slim of wrist, and dangles it from a string.

BBC: How to buy jade in Asia

There was also party popper string on the vicar's body, a piece of apple was recovered from between the clergyman's legs and an unopened condom was found nearby.

BBC: Betty Yates and the Reverend John Suddards

Benedetti will lead the ensemble as they prepare and perform what is billed as "one of the most difficult and exciting pieces for string orchestra - Bartok's Divertimento - a piece selected to challenge the players and encourage musical excellence".

BBC: Scotland