I found a ‘pet’ alone on the street – I was desperately trying to track down owners when I discovered what it really was
A KIND passerby was in for a shock after he realized the hamster that he believed he had saved actually turned out to be a species he had never heard of.
Jostein Hansen, who hails from Norway, couldn’t resist intervening when he saw the small fur ball scurry across the snowy street. He opted to swoop it up in hopes of avoiding a road-kill situation.
The local man’s daughter had a pet hamster of her own, so the father knew just how important it was to help. He wanted to track down the lost hamster’s owner.
“If some kids have lost it, then it will be seen as a disaster,” Hansen told a local reporter. “So I took the chance to try to catch it.”
Hansen and the journalist, Sanna Drogset Børstad, decided to travel together to a pet store connected with Animal Protection Norway.
After explaining the situation and presenting the supposed hamster to employees, the two were told that the creature wasn’t a pet at all.
A staff member at the pet store identified the animal as a Norwegian lemming. The species of wild rodent can easily be mistaken for a domesticated hamster.
After realizing he made a misidentification mistake, Hansen knew that he had to return the wild animal to his natural habitat.
The journalist who covered the story alongside Hansen admitted that the entire conundrum turned out to be quite hilarious.
“We all laughed a lot when we figured out what it really was,” Drogset Børstad remarked.
While it did not go as planned, Hansen and the lemming had an incredible journey along the way.
“He did the right thing,” Gøril, the worker who identified the rodent’s true identity, told The Dodo. “He saw an animal he thought needed help.”
Unsurprisingly, this is not the first time a passerby has rescued an animal off the streets that turned out to be something they hadn’t expected.
One Tennessee woman thought she was rescuing a furry feline, but later found the animal was a wild bobcat.
The bobcat was also returned back where it was found.
At times, the uncanny similarities between wild and domesticated animals have led people to believe they are rescuing something that doesn’t need rescuing at all.