“POV: Your hamster escaped into the depths of your car.”
A Tesla owner was slapped with a costly repair bill after her hamster got loose inside. Was it entirely the rodent’s fault or is there a design flaw to blame?
Olivia (@m3.eezy) recently posted about what happened to her car, and everything it took to fix it.
Her TikTok shows the Tesla’s gutted interior with various tools strewn about the floor. The car’s front seats and center console have been removed. “POV: your hamster escaped into the depths of your car,” she writes. She adds in a caption that “chewed wires” were another consequence of the rodent’s escape.
According to the bill, addressing the hamster-related damage cost her $435.74 plus $241.78 for the work.
With all taxes and fees added, Olivia ended up spending nearly $700 to fix the damage caused by her hamster.
It wasn’t all bad news, however.
The Tesla owner also shared a text message from the service department. “Good morning! Great news!” it read, along with a picture of her hamster inside a small plastic bin.
Folks who replied to Olivia’s video had varying opinions.
Amidst the slew of quips about the hamster being in on the repair job with the auto techs, others shared their own animal car service situations.
“When I worked at Kia a customer came in saying, ‘my car is meowing and I don’t own a cat! Get it out! And if it’s still alive, I don’t want it!’ $800 later we had a new shop kitty,” they wrote.
Someone else commended Olivia’s devotion to her pet. “No one has said it. But what good owner, most people would say ‘oh no, well it’s just a hamster it’s not worth it, he’ll make it out eventually,’” they remarked.
Another person concocted a solution they thought would have been much more cost-effective for Olivia. “Should’ve just blasted the AC and put cheese on the floor,” they wrote.
This isn’t the first time someone’s hamster managed to rack up a serious repair bill for a car owner. In 2014, Mirror reported on a 22-year-old UK woman’s unfortunate misplacement of her own pet hamster after it ran amok inside of her vehicle. The creature, Poppy, had chewed through the box from the pet shop.
Scrambling to find her new hamster, the owner brought her vehicle to a repair shop. And just like Olivia’s Tesla, the interior needed to be gutted, culminating in hundreds of dollars in repair bills. Thankfully, Poppy was located behind interior paneling inside the vehicle, but had fractured her leg in the process. Which required a visit to the vet.
Despite the unexpected day-one costs of new hamster ownership, the woman seemed grateful to be living with the little creature. “It’s been quite an amazing few days with our new pet!” the hamster owner was quoted as saying.
Hamsters chewing through their boxes on the way home appears to be a recurring theme. A 2026 article reports that a different woman went through a nearly identical situation during a 15-minute drive from the pet store.
Again, they visited a mechanic to find the creature, which ultimately required workers to dismantle fixtures in the cabin. Luckily, the shop didn’t charge her any money to locate the critter.
There’s no shortage of tales of pet hamsters getting lost inside of their cars. One Redditor said they found theirs stuck in a side airbag.
However arguably amusing some of the stories are, rodent damage to vehicles can be a serious problem. Squirrels, rats, snakes, and other small creatures will often seek the interior crevices of motor vehicles for warmth and protection from the elements.
They find these environments safe and warm. But having an animal take up residence in your vehicle can be a serious, not to mention expensive, problem. As Car and Driver reports, wiring and insulation, especially soy-based solutions, seem to attract critters with busy teeth, like hamsters, squirrels, and mice.
Motor1 previously wrote about a Honda owner whose car sustained $3,200 in repair bills thanks to soy-based wiring insulation. Their insurance policy didn’t cover the damage, either. As we previously reported, there is a way to keep your vehicle free from rodent-free: rodent repelling tape. In fact, the Japanese automaker sells an OEM variant of the stuff.
Motor1 has reached out to Olivia via TikTok direct message for further comment. We’ll update this if she responds.
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