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consequences.’
    The pounding at the door started up again.
    ‘Well, there’s only one way to find out who it is,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘We’ll just have to go to the living room and peek through the window.’
    ‘Or we could always answer the door,’ suggested Samantha.
    ‘Oh yes, I suppose we could try that too,’ conceded Nanny Piggins.
    And so without peeking through the window, the letterbox, the keyhole or using the spy camera attached to the roof, Nanny Piggins flung open the front door to see who was there and immediately regretted it. For there on the doorstep was an angry-looking armadillo. (Now if you do not know what an armadillo looks like, I had better describe it. Because an armadillo is the type of animal that, if no-one told you what it looked like, you would never guess. It is most peculiar. It looks like a pig going to a costume party dressed as a tank. Like a pig, an armadillo has short legs and a snout. But unlike a pig, an armadillo is covered in a leathery, hard shell.) Then the armadillo, without any introduction or explanation, immediately tried to slap Nanny Piggins across the face with a glove.
    Fortunately, however, Nanny Piggins was an eighth dan black belt in Taekwondo. Her self-defence reflexes were so super fast, she could not have let anarmadillo slap her in the face even if she wanted to. She just blocked the slap. The armadillo tried to slap her again and again and again. But each time Nanny Piggins deftly blocked the blow.
    ‘Would you just hold still and let me slap you, for goodness sake!’ said the exasperated armadillo.
    ‘Why?’ asked Nanny Piggins. She could not see any good reason she should let an armadillo slap her, but she was prepared to be open-minded.
    ‘Because I’m trying to challenge you to a duel,’ said the armadillo.
    ‘You’re what?’ asked Nanny Piggins, beginning to believe that armadillos were as peculiar as they looked.
    ‘Oh, I understand,’ said Samantha.
    ‘You do?’ said Nanny Piggins, Derrick and Michael in unison, because they certainly didn’t.
    ‘In the olden days if you wanted to challenge someone to a duel, you slapped them in the face with a glove,’ explained Samantha.
    ‘Did you learn that at school?’ asked Nanny Piggins, begrudgingly beginning to feel the first dawning of respect for the education system.
    ‘No, I learnt it from reading lots of historical romance novels,’ admitted Samantha.
    ‘Then it must be true,’ decided Nanny Piggins,because she had a lot more respect for romance writers than she did for teachers.
    ‘The child is correct,’ declared the armadillo. ‘My name is Eduardo Montebianco and I have travelled all the way from Mexico to challenge you to a duel.’
    ‘Why?’ asked Nanny Piggins.
    ‘Did you steal his true love or dishonour his family name?’ questioned Samantha. ‘That’s the reason they usually have duels in novels.’
    ‘I don’t think so,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘But I am very glamorous. Sometimes I have a powerful effect on people without even realising. Once the head coach of the Chinese gymnastics team saw me being fired out of a cannon and was so impressed with my athleticism and grace, she immediately went home to China and made all her gymnasts put on twenty kilos by eating doughnuts.’
    ‘Did it improve their performance as gymnasts?’ asked Michael.
    ‘No. They enjoyed the doughnuts so much they all ran away to work in doughnut shops,’ admitted Nanny Piggins. ‘But they were very happy.’
    ‘I’m challenging you to a duel,’ interrupted Eduardo, ‘because you claim to be the “Greatest Flying Animal in all the World”.’
    ‘So?’ said Nanny Piggins, perfectly confident that this was true.
    ‘It is a lie,’ declared Eduardo. ‘For I am the “Greatest Flying Animal in all the World”.’
    Now if you are paying attention, you might, at this point, question how either a pig (Nanny Piggins) or an armadillo (Eduardo Montebianco) could possibly claim to