I WALKED out of the house yesterday to find a large, dead fish on the road. It looked like an over-sized goldfish, although it could have been something more exotic.

Today, I looked out of the window to see two pet rabbits hopping about the street. Tomorrow, I hope to open the front door to find a gazelle nibbling the hostas and a chimpanzee swinging from the satellite dish.

I tried to catch the rabbits, thinking I could keep them safe until their owner came forward, but they had no desire to re-enter captivity and sped off as per Watership Down.

Run, run, run little rabbits. It's not a proper warren Cowslip. The farmer is feeding you up to eat.

Animals have dominated the week. The toddler wasn't eating her scrambled egg the other morning and was threatened with her breakfast being given to the dog.

She decided this was quite a good idea actually but they should share, so she crouched down on all fours and took it in turns with the dog to eat straight from the bowl. I left for work.

If you're in the market for another family life anecdote, you're in luck. We were all sat watching Three Day Nanny looking for tips this week when the featured family was advised to get rid of their child's dummy by encouraging her to hang it from a so-called dummy tree before she went to bed.

The idea is that you tell the child the dummy fairy will take the dummy away from the tree and replace it with a gift.

"What a great idea," we thought.

Everything went to plan until the girl requested that the fairies brought her a dinosaur.

It's 7.30pm on a Saturday night and you're hoping to go to the pub at some point, but to avoid your daughter needing therapy in adulthood you need to find a toy dinosaur to hang from a tree which you will pretend has been left by fairies.

"What would Lemmy do in this situation?" I wondered, as I often find myself doing, while others in the house busied themselves with resolving the situation.

Fortunately, Facebook is excellent for this kind of thing and within minutes a kind-hearted parent down the street had offered a box full of stegosauruses and diplodocuses.