Tink the hamster was alive after all (Picture: SWNS)

A hamster came back from the grave after she was buried in a back garden on Good Friday.

Tink the hamster was found ‘cold and lifeless’ in the bottom of her cage and laid to rest by a couple who were looking after her for a friend.

But the next day the rodent – who was not dead but hibernating – reappeared as perplexed Les Kilbourne-Smith crushed a pile of old boxes for recycling.

‘Suddenly a little face popped out of one of them, which gave me a big startle I can assure you,’ the bus company worker told the Gloucester Citizen.




‘The energy she had to dig herself out of that hole was remarkable.’

Tink was being cared for by Mr Kilbourne-Smith’s daughter Lisa and boyfriend James Davis, 24, as her owner was moving house.

They called the friend to break the sad news that her pet had died when they found her comatose.

‘We wrapped her up in a load of kitchen towel and buried her about a foot deep so the cat couldn’t dig her back up again,’ said Lisa, 23.

Mr Kilbourne-Smith, who was visiting his daughter in Painswick, Gloucestershire, when he spotted Tink, added: ‘It’s amazing that she survived really.

‘She had been out in that freezing cold all night – it was a good 24 hours.’

Tink, 2, has now been dubbed ‘Jesus’ by the family after her Easter resurrection.