ROALD Dahl is rightly regarded as one of this country’s most beloved children’s authors.

His books have sold millions around the world, have been made into hit films and, of course, led to two of the biggest West End shows in recent years.

I grew up on them, my children have grown up of them, and I suspect their children will grow up on them.

Unfortunately a somewhat horrific incident at the D’Arcy-Jones household at the weekend has rather taken the shine off Mr Dahl’s works, and certainly one book in particular, Fantastic Mr Fox.

That’s because a very unfantastic member of Mr Fox’s kin decided to dig a hole under our guinea pigs’ hutch and snatch them all in the dead of night.

We have had a long history of guinea pigs here at D’Arcy-Jones meadows with Snoopy, Smudge and Spot being the third batch of furry friends to live here.

And fortunately all have had quite long lives, well for guinea pigs anyway.

To be fair, Snoopy, Smudge and Spot all had pretty lengthy innings too and it has to be said the Beautiful Wife and I had been expecting to see at least one of them go to the big hutch in the sky in the last few months.

That being the case, we weren’t quite ready for all three of them going, and in such a gruesome way.

Thank goodness the children didn’t discover the grim truth.

The BWhad gone out to put some washing on the line and noticed a huge great hole in our lawn by the guinea pig run.

Naturally, she scolded our dog Ludo, who looked rather indignant at the insinuation. Then she remembered his holes are usually under the fence rather than the lawn and suddenly realised what might have happened.

The first I knew of it was when she motioned to me to come outside.

She gave me the “something terrible has happened in the garden which we musn’t let the children know about just yet” look, so I guessed one of the pigs or the chickens had died.

Again, I wasn’t really ready for all of the guinea pigs dying!

In the end, we told the children and they were naturally pretty upset by the whole thing.

As I said, I suspect we won’t be reading, listening to the audio book, or even watching the film version of Fantastic Mr Fox for quite some time, which is a shame because I really do like the animated Wes Anderson version of it.

Now, I know all of this isn’t really Mr Dahl’s fault and I bet if I told the kids we were going to see Matilda in the West End, they wouldn’t say: “No way dad, that’s by the same man who spun us that cruel lie that all foxes are fantastic and cool.”

We are all well aware Fantastic Mr Fox is just a story. We also know that if a tiger had indeed come to tea he would have ripped Sophie’s head off.

It’s all part and parcel of life.

Foxes need to survive, they sometimes need to feed their children too. They are wild animals and that’s what wild animals tend to do.

It’s just I would rather this particular fox had stuck to rummaging through the bins.

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