The thought of losing money is always heartbreaking, but there’s nothing quite like the devastation of hearing £13,000 worth of bank notes has been ravaged by mice in a cash machine.
The money-hungry rodents reportedly found their goldmine inside an ATM in Tinsukia, in north-eastern India’s Assam state.
According to the Times of India, the cash machine stopped working, so staff at the State Bank of India called some technicians in. Probably just a loose wire, right?
Unfortunately not.
The technicians opened the ATM and found the mice had feasted on half of the cash the ATM held – 1.2 million Indian rupees. Or we could go for a glass half full approach, and say the mice thankfully left half of the money in one piece?
The bank complained to the police, but since there aren’t many tiny mouse-sized handcuffs around, there was little the police could do.
The Tinsukia district Superintendent of Police, Mugdhajyoti Mahanta, explained:
When the engineer and other officials opened the ATM, they found destroyed notes and also found a dead mouse inside the ATM.
A senior police official in Tinsukia said:
On June 14 when the ATM was opened for repair, technicians found shreds of currency notes of different denomination, including many Rs 2000 and Rs 500 notes.
Few mice were also found inside the ATM. A formal complaint has been lodged with the police at Sijubari outpost.
While the bank didn’t see the funny side of the chewed money, Twitter didn’t fail us, bringing hilarity to the otherwise unfortunate situation:
Surgical strike by mice on ATM machine
The money launderer’s version of ‘My dog ate my homework’.
This isn’t the first time mice have had an appetite for money. Earlier this year the same thing happened in an ATM in Kazakhstan.
The mice were reportedly trying to hide from the cold winter when they climbed into a cash machine at a ForteBank branch in the capital city, Astana.
By the time employees at the bank realised they had lodgers, the mice had eaten their way through hundreds of pounds worth of bank notes.
While again no tiny handcuffs were available, the mice were detained in a cardboard box by security operatives to stop the thieves from striking again.
A bank spokesperson explained the situation, saying:
At the moment we are investigating all the details of what happened. The rodents are not in danger.
After the incident, the bank reportedly chose to employ some new security guards to guard the holes which the mice had used. The new security guards are cats.
What a wonderful world we live in.
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Emily Brown first began delivering important news stories aged just 13, when she launched her career with a paper round. She graduated with a BA Hons in English Language in the Media from Lancaster University, and went on to become a freelance writer and blogger. Emily contributed to The Sunday Times Travel Magazine and Student Problems before becoming a journalist at UNILAD, where she works on breaking news as well as longer form features.