Picture it: you've pulled a 36 hour day, the kids are sorted for a while, hubby is out, so you decide to grab a quick pick-me-up nap before you cook dinner.
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This was Fernhill woman Leesey Wighton's plan - but it was ruined after she was shocked awake by pain, covered in blood, and thinking - 'am I dreaming?'
All from a mouse.
"I set my alarm, it took me ages to get to sleep, but I finally fell asleep, and the next thing I woke up and it felt like someone had put a nail through my thumb!" she explained.
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"It took me a while, I was disorientated, and I thought I must have had a dream, but then there was so much pain, and there was blood everywhere."
Grabbing a heap of tissues, she went out to her kids who were in the lounge room.
"They just started yelling, 'oh my god mum what's happened?' And I said, 'I don't know!' There was blood everywhere - it was like a small massacre."
She didn't think it was a snake, despite the two punctures appearing as a reptile bite, and thought the only other explanation was a mouse.
"But it's strange, mice don't normally bite - I must've moved at the wrong time in my sleep and scared it."
They tore the room apart and found nothing. But when her husband came back, he found the culprit mouse, hiding.
After a trip to the hospital - where she found helpful, caring if somewhat bemused nurses and doctors - she got an updated tetanus shot and was told to monitor the bite for a few days, just in case.
Mrs Wighton and her family, like a lot of the state at the moment, have a mouse plague.
What's interesting to her, is they would see the odd grey field mouse before, but these swarms and hoards of vermin are brown and flecked.
"We are catching anywhere from 20 to 50 mice outside a day," she lamented.
"We've only had maybe three inside, and the cats have gotten them straight away - except for this one," she laughed.
But apart from a rather terrifying midnight encounter with a rat outside in the metre box, they've been a prolific nuisance rather than a literal "pain".
"We've made up big traps, but we're just not getting a break. They're not dying down, they just keep coming and coming."
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