A HAMSTER’S bid for freedom led to a Wollescote mother having her car dismantled in the search for the runaway rodent.

Lisa Moseley, of Vicars Walk, decided to buy the pet for her five-year-old daughter, Ashlee, as her kitten, Dobbi, had died.

But she got more than she bargained for when the new addition to the family chewed his way out of the cardboard box he was being transported in while they were driving back from Pets at Home in Oldbury.

Miss Moseley, aged 34, panicked when she realised he had escaped, she said: “I was looking in the car, I took the back seats up and pulled up some of the carpet but I couldn’t find him.”

Distressed, she felt she had no option but to take her car to the Evans Halshaw Ford garage on Hagley Road, Stourbridge.

She said: “I told them I’d lost the hamster in my car and I didn’t know where it was and explained that the hamster was very important to Ashlee because her kitten had died.”

What was an average day at work for garage technician, Mark Hill, turned out to be one of the “weirdest” as he led the rescue mission.

He said: “We started looking in the car and took all the seats out. I eventually found him in the centre console, underneath the handbrake leaver.”

To say thank you, Miss Moseley and Ashlee took the team a thank you card and presents  the next day and revealed to Mr Hill that they had decided to name their pet Mark in his honour.

Mr Hill, aged 24, said he found it “quite funny” that the rodent had been named after him and added: “It is the weirdest thing I have come across in the eight years I have been in this trade.”