That last piece is NOTHING compared to this horror story

...So did I tell you about the rats and the spider? No?

My big sister, she is the one in the picture, has had rats. Real live actual rats. She went on holiday and two weeks later came home to find her front door open. Entering with a sense of anticipation and dread she found nothing missing but a few things out of place. However, from that moment she couldn't shake the feeling that she was being watched and as the days went on, more and more things were being moved.

Most disturbingly of all, her chocolate bars kept going missing. Something was in her flat and it was playing DIRTY. If you dare mess with a girls chocolate store then you can consider yourself not just at war but at NUCLEAR war with said female.

I insisted she had found herself a Mickey and as I had found out, Mickey's are both robust and crafty but fairly harmless...if you ignore all the Salmonella they spray out of their backsides that is. 'It's cute' I squealed, 'Your very own pet'. And then she found the droppings. 'It's a Mickey, definitely.' 'They look a bit big to be from a Mickey...' 'I'm telling you, it's a Mickey.' The big sister was not at all convinced. By this point she was coming home to find her jewellery thrown over the floor, her plant stripped of leaves, more and more chocolate was going missing, despite her best efforts to protect this sacred stash.

So she took the measures that every combat has to take at one point or another, this was no longer diplomatic, this was time for real weapons of mass destruction to be deplored. This was the point of no return. It was life, or death. And so, she laid a mouse trap, baited with chocolate spread and then she left the house.

A few hours later, slowly she opened her front door....Eeeekkk, went the door, not the Mickey. As she edged herself slowly around the door, in the corner of her eye she saw a tail. A long, thick, black tail lying limp across her kitchen floor. This was no Mickey, this was a GIANT Mickey. A monster, a gangster, a neck biting, dirty Harry, ball shrivelling (one imagines) RAT. There's a rat in the kitchen, what am I gonna do?! She yelled/sung to her terrified self. Well this rat in the kitchen was in fact blood spattered and broken necked, caught in the oh too small mouse trap, fangs poking out, covered in chocolate. It's not the first time that Cadbury's has caused a mammal to get itself all tied up over a sample of it's delights, it won't be the last. The evidence was insurmountable, there was no denying that her companion of the last few weeks was indeed a rat. She had known it all along but now she had the evidence Tony Blair would have leaped for joy to have discovered in his own war (not that there are rats in Iraq because I'm not sure that was what that war was about but you know...). The problem with 'evidence' is what to do with it?

Destroy it was the only possible answer. But that meant, TOUCHING it. But one cannot enter war and then get squeamish about the spoils. War is war and death is death and all good corpses need a burial. So with tense buttocks and a dry throat she did what all good morticians do and located a plastic bag, lifted the corpse and threw it in the bag. Then she did what we hope most good morticians don't do, she took a picture, she posted it online and she binned that rat without a word of passing and with none of his family present. But hey, you know, this is what happens when you're a terrorist, hey Osama? And this rat had been nothing if not a terrorist, did I mention the chocolate???

After the corpse had been unceremoniously dumped it was time to get in back up forces. Along came Molly the dog, nose forward to sniff out the rats hiding place and search for evidence of babies. She found the 'nest' behind the freezer lined with none other than at least SIX Wispa and Flake wrappers. Alongside some leaves from the now dead plant by the front door. After all his hideouts had been discovered and Molly dog had established that there were no family members lying in wait, Molly retreated and left big sister alone in a flat that had been the scene of some serious terror activity, a fight to the death and a lot of sewage spillages. It was clean up time. It was de rat time. It was claim the territory back time. The boundaries were re-drawn by means of rat repelling foam sprayed into every nook, cranny and hole. The carpets were cleaned, the furniture moved and gave claim to all the night time antics of our chocolate stealing rat, he had been EVERYWHERE, even, *sucks breath in* UNDER THE BLOODY BED!!!!!!

Now this is where the big sister loses it and calls in re-enforcements once more. I put on my over sized shoes, red nose and curly wig and raced round with my clown cape strapped to my back. Don't worry big sister, little clown sister is HERE. Within ten minutes of my rescue mission I found myself screaming whilst jumping onto the bed in a state of near hysterical fear. Big sister, assuming I had seen another rat is nearly in tears crying for me 'What? What is it?!' In my fear I can barely speak but manage a point. There, halfway over the threshold is a spider bigger than my fist* he has four legs in the room and four legs on the balcony outside and he is frozen to the spot. Following my hysterical instructions big sister goes to get the hoover whilst I stand shaking from head to toe, staring into the wild eyes of this new monster. 'No!' I'm almost crying real tears 'He'll climb back down the pipe, you have to kill him!' The spider has clearly taken in this scene and realised that at some point that evening he made a bad decision that has led him to the cliff edge he finds himself on. So he does what all great explorers do when they are lost and he retraces his steps. Lifting one giant leg, then the other until he had, rather gracefully, backed himself out of the room and back onto the balcony. Big sister reaches a shaking arm out just long enough to close the door behind him. And then, with shaking hands we near cry with both fear and laughter. 'You scared me near to death! I thought you'd seen another rat' 'I know! I'm sorry.' With shaky breath I do what only the best little sister in the World would do. I leave. I leave my big sister in a room in disarray, filled with the memories of a now departed rat, too scared to sleep. I leave the spider, rat infested hole and I don't look back.

Every man for himself.

And I will tell you something else, there isn't a part of my body that regrets that decision.

*By my fist I mean, my fist when I was a brand new baby.