Shropshire Star

Skip the hamster finds Shropshire home after bin bag ordeal

They say cats have nine lives, but Skip the hamster showed he may have even more after he survived being thrown out with the rubbish.

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The cute rodent survived his cage being tied up in a plastic bag and taken to Oswestry's household recycling centre where it was thrown on to a pile of waste.

It was only an eagle-eyed worker noticing a rustling from the bag that stopped the hamster being loaded with other black bags on to the back of a lorry and taken away to the incinerator.

Staff at the waste transfer centre were horrified when they opened the bag and saw the hamster in a filthy cage with no food or water.

It was John Welsby, site supervisor for Veolia, who noticed the black bin bag moving. He rescued the hamster, who was listless and frightened, and took him to the depot office.

The cage was washed out and another of the site operatives, Carl Hodgkiss, bought bedding and food. Within a few hours the hamster, christened Skip, was running around on his wheel in the now clean cage.

"It was absolutely disgusting the state the cage was in, and then to throw the hamster out with the rubbish is just disgusting," Carl said.

Carl took Skip home for the weekend and as soon as 13-year-old daughter Abi saw it, Skip had a permanent home. The family have no idea whether Skip is a girl or boy but say it is really friendly. "Skip has obviously been looked after in the past because it is used to being handled," Abi said.

Mum Melanie said the family was used to taking in rescue animals, having given a home to two cats.

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