Thursday, December 27, 2007

Mouse corpse found in Christmas cracker

Pulling crackers is a tradition on Christmas day but one New Zealand woman found her cracker contained a macabre surprise - a corpse.

The discovery of a dead mouse in her one of a pack of eight crackers shortly after Christmas dinner put paid to Murphy St resident Betty Lawrence's appetite for the rest of the day.

"Everytime I closed my eyes last night night all I could see was this mouse poking out of the cracker." Mrs Lawrence said she had taken the crackers to her daughter's house in Waikiwi, where she was part of a party of 20 family being hosted for Christmas dinner. Dinner was followed by pulling the crackers, which each contained one paper hat, one joke and a sticker.



"We set off a couple when we found the mouse," she said. There was some prior warning of what was to come, Mrs Lawrence said.

"I had said to my grandaughter 'what's the smell?' and we couldn't work it out until we pulled the cracker," Mrs Lawrence said.

"My niece started pulling it out thinking it was a soft toy, she said to me `well there's where the smell's coming from'." The discovery left her feeling sick, she said. "It ruined my appetite for the rest of the day." The Indonesia-manufactured crackers were part of a hamper supplied by Elles Rd New World through her bank the Southland Credit Union, Mrs Lawrence said.

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