Kentish Gazette Canterbury & District
Dumped hamster rescued
A plucky hamster narrowly escaped death in the back of a dustbin lorry after being cruelly dumped in the rubbish. Bags of litter from communal bins were being crushed in Market Street, Herne Bay, when an eagle-eyed Serco worker noticed something strange.
Vigilant Courteney Lawson saw a tiny head poking out of an already squashed cage, and alerted her colleague Martyn Eldridge, 59.
Mr Eldridge, who lives in Canterbury, said: “We saw that it was a hamster.
“The cage was completely crushed and it had managed to get out.
“It disappeared into the back of the lorry so we turned the engine off, got the muck out and we found it right at the bottom. “We picked it up and put it in a cardboard box.
“It was quite difficult to get hold of because it kept running about.”
After finally managing to grab the hamster after 20 minutes, the pair were left pondering what to do with it. Martyn, who has been doing the job for 10 years, says he has never found a live animal in the back of a lorry before and it is the weirdest thing he has discovered.
After putting it in the lorry cab as they continued their shift, Martyn phoned his partner Kym Amos to tell her about the discovery.
She told him to bring it back to their home in Hersden and said she would take care of it because she has looked after hamsters before.
Kym, a family liaison officer, now has a makeshift cage for the hamster, which has joined their family of pets - including three cats, a dog and a guinea pig. The couple had their hearts set on naming it Garbage as a tribute to where it was found. But since finding out the hamster is actually female, they are trying to think of a more suitable name.