A woman has taken to TikTok to say she was hit with a costly repair bill after her hamster got loose in her Tesla and caused extensive damage. TikTok user Olivia (@m3.eezy) recounted the truly unusual story in great detail.
It is clear from the outset that the hamster has done some damage. The video shows off a gutted interior inside the EV, and there are tools strewn all over the floor of the car. Olivia had to remove the front seats and center console.
“POV: your hamster escaped into the depths of your car,” she wrote in the text overlay. It also becomes apparent that the hamster had chewed through wires inside the car, meaning the electrical systems no longer worked as they should. It isn’t very often you hear of a hamster wrecking someone’s car.
The video got a lot of views very quickly on TikTok, and it got plenty of comments from those bewildered by the situation. Unfortunately for Oliva, it wasn’t a cheap fix either, as when she got the repair bill through, with taxes and labor added on, the work came close to $700.
What Had the Hamster Done to the Tesla?
@m3.eezy+ chewed wires🫠♬ original sound – notjasonkai
The video showed the extent of the damage done by the hamster. Oliva stated that the hamster had chewed through a lot of the wiring in the car, and it had taken a good chunk out of parts of the interior as well. The video shows parts of the interior, such as the seats and center console, removed so mechanics could begin repairing the damage done to it.
Oliva said that the bill cost $435.74, plus another $241.78 to actually carry out the work. With the final fees and taxes added, it was around $700 that she had to pay to get the damage fixed. But there was some good news. The service department that had worked on the car had managed to find Olivia’s hamster and rescue him from within the car. They sent her a photograph of him chilling out inside a small plastic bin.
TikTok users who watched the video shared their own stories in the comments section. “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,” said one. Another praised Olivia’s devotion to her pet. “No one has said it. But what a 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 said.
Animals Can Cause Carnage Inside a Car
This isn’t the first time that an animal has done a lot of damage inside someone’s car. In 2014, British publication The Mirror reported how a 22-year-old woman had her hamster run amok inside her car. It had chewed through the box it was in from the pet shop, and the interior had to be gutted before the mechanics were finally able to recover the hamster.
Hamsters chewing through their boxes as they are taken home appears to be a common theme. A report from earlier in 2026 detailed how another woman had a similar incident, on just a 15-minute drive home from a pet shop with her new hamster. Thankfully, it was recovered, but again, the interior needed gutting in order to safely recover the pet.