Mark Taylor called out an IT repairmen who found a five inch earthworm inside his laptop. It had crawled into his computer through an air vent and wrapped itself around the internal fan, leading to a total breakdown.

Mr Taylor, 45, suspects the culprits were his two cats who are in the habit of pouncing on earthworms outside and bringing them into the house. Mr Taylor, from Yeovil, said: "The worm was obviously looking for a hiding place and must have crawled in through the air vent to get away from the cats.I couldn't help thinking that people get computer worms all the time, but not real life ones."

Computer technician Sam Robinson, 28, who discovered the worm said: "I took the back off and had a look inside. Then I spotted what at first I thought was some sort of hair band or elastic band wrapped around the fan. I soon discovered that it was a worm which had been burned to a frazzle. It had obviously wrapped around the fan when somebody had turned on the computer and caused the breakdown due to the fan jamming. Needless to say I hadn't come across a problem like this before but was happy to sort it out for Mark."

Good job he didn't find a Trojan horse!

Now... where's the CPU?

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