On rats

On rats

I'm feeling dead hard this morning. For I have been extra manly and caught – with these murderous, blood-stained hands - a rat in the in-laws' garden and killed it TO DEATH.

Lifting the lid of the compost bin on a recent visit, there it was, sitting on the top of the pile, waving to me like Basil the Rat in Fawlty Towers.

"Mwaaaaargh! I said, in surprise and alarm.

"Meeeeep!" it replied, also in surprise and alarm.

I slammed the lid back down and ran round the garden in a mild panic until I realised I wasn't, in fact, dying of the BLACK DEATH.

And this is where man's mastery over technology takes over, for I set a trap, and not long later a pleasing "SNAP" betrayed the truth.

Ratty could not have done the same to me, scuppered that he is by a brain the size of a peanut, BLACK DEATH and a lack of opposable thumbs.

Basil: He is DEAD, his Earthly soul – if you believe that kind of thing – in the bony hands of the Grim Squeaker.

So, I ask this important question: Anybody got any tasty rat recipes? There's good eating on one of them.