Magnet-swallowing hamster recovering after sticking itself to bars of metal cage

A hamster spent the Easter break recovering with its owners from the unusual ordeal of eating a Spider-Man magnet and becoming stuck to the metal bars of its cage. Kate Meech and her four children returned to their Bugbrooke home last Thursday afternoon to find four month-old Smurf quite distressed, attached to the outside of its cage.

Kate said: “When I saw the small circular shape from inside her cheek I realised she was attached by a magnet. It took a bit of a tug to pull her away from it and then we had to keep her in a plastic box, for obvious reasons.



“She seemed to be fine so I thought she would just spit it out if she was left alone. But after checking on her for a few days I realised that, instead, her body started to push it out of her cheek, treating it as a foreign body. It made me feel quite queasy. We found the magnet and she just has a little graze on her cheek. But she’s back to her normal, loopy self.”

Mrs Meech said the magnet was understood to have come from the foot of her 10-year-old son Thomas’s toy Spider-Man figure. She added: “I’ve warned the children to keep their toys away from the cage from now on.”