Mouse Discovered Living Inside Curtains in Unsettling Video: 'Move Out'

Unsettling footage has surfaced online of the moment a woman discovered that a mouse had been living inside her curtains.

Lottie Cooke shared a clip chronicling her alarming discovery in a video uploaded to TikTok, and it has already been watched more than 4.2 million times.

In 2021, the U.S. Census Bureau calculated that 14.8 million of America's 124 million occupied housing units reported seeing rodents (mice or rats) over the previous 12 months. While it's one thing to establish you have a mouse problem, dealing with it is a whole other matter.

Mice might be small in stature, but they are a surprisingly intelligent species. In 2021, a study by researchers from CalTech highlighted how mice were capable of learning much quicker than previously thought. Through a series of maze-based experiments, the scientists were able to see how mice were capable of navigating unfamiliar labyrinth environments with relative ease.

That might go some way to explaining how Cooke's unwanted rodent guest avoided detection for as long as they did. Her video captures the moment that she and another unnamed companion discover the mouse living inside the top of their curtains.

In a few seconds of terror for anyone with a phobia of rodents, Cooke can be seen attempting to pull the mouse out of its hiding spot by the tail.

She then discovers, to her shock, that the mouse has made its way inside the lining of the curtain. The rodent then drops down out of the bottom of the drape before scuttling across the floor.

Though Cooke and her companion do succeed in catching the mouse in a plastic box and throwing it outside, the entire saga makes for difficult viewing.

The clip ends with the camera panning over to Cooke's cat napping peacefully on the couch, with an onscreen caption offering a sarcastic "thanks" for the feline's efforts. It's not the first time a cat has failed to live up to the billing when a mouse arrives on the scene.

In this instance, though, the majority of the focus among those commenting on TikTok was the ordeal that Cooke endured beforehand.

"Wow, you are so brave," one viewer wrote, with another commenting: "I'd literally pack all my stuff and leave."

"I'd be petrified," a third posted. "I'd call pest control to deal with that instantly and live in a hotel until the house is safe to sleep in." A fourth commented: "I would move out rather than trying to get the mouse out."

Elsewhere, another user suggested it might be "time to redecorate" in the wake of the mouse-led invasion. There were also some warnings that this might not be the last they see of this particular rodent.

"I read somewhere that if you set a mouse free you should take it 2 miles away from your home because it will just come back again," one TikTok user wrote.

Newsweek has contacted Cooke via TikTok for comment.

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