I SAW a rat today - a great big one near Queen's Gardens.

It was dead, it had obviously been run over.

There was a really strange expression on its face as if it had guessed its fate about a minute before it took its last breath.

It actually had quite a sweet face, despite its tongue lolling vacantly to one side, it reminded me of the cartoon character Ratatouille.

Perhaps it was trying to get to the council office on the other side of the road? Or perhaps it had just left there?

All the same, I was quite shocked to see it. You don't expect it do you? Walking along the pavement on a lovely sunny day.

It doesn't actually give a good impression of a town when you see rats scurrying about.

Imagine if you were one of those people happily sitting on a park bench and a big rat pops its head out of the bushes?

So why have we got them? Could it be to do with how much litter we have polluting our streets?

With the increase in kebab shops and fast food outlets in general - we see more and more discarded food on our pavements.

People seem to think nothing of chucking their chip wrappers, binning their burger cartons or pitching their pizza boxes.

It's disgusting but we put up with it, it's become normal.

A few weeks ago I was in Cardiff and I was surprised by how clean the city centre is.

A mechanical clean-sweeper seemed to be on permanent duty and there wasn't a sign of litter or graffiti anywhere.

Yet it has a massive student population. So either they are well trained or Cardiff council is very particular about its cleaning regime.

Bring on the Pied Piper!