Driving home tonight, pulling off the M1 at junction 26 at about 0:20 this morning, a critter ran out in front of my car as I was stopped at traffic lights.

I don’t know what it was.  It didn’t look like a rat, although in size terms it would have been big for a rat.  Certainly much much too big to be a mouse. It was somehow more tubular and rounder than rats are.  It almost looked like a raccoon, but that would be a strange thing to see running around a Nottinghamshire road at night.  Its tail was darker than its body, and it looked like it was a sort of brown colour.
Whatever it was, it was fairly bright.  It knew to run off the road when the lights changed, without even needing me to hoot or rev to scare it off.  It scampered off into a drain hole in the kerb, and I continued on home.