A FAMILY has increased its menagerie of pets by seven, after some unexpected guests dropped in.

Rebecca Lowther, ten, her brother Thomas, eight, and their friend Michael Ditchburn, ten, went to feed their rabbit, called Muppet, and guinea pig, Dimples, as usual after school on Tuesday.

But Rebecca had the fright of her life when she looked in their food container and found a small brown mouse running around.

Eagle-eyed Thomas then spotted six tiny, pink babies huddled among the food.

While some people may be afraid of mice, the youngsters have been enjoying watching them. They are keeping the mouse and its babies in the same container in the kitchen of their home in Balmoral Road, Darlington.

Rebecca said: "I think the mummy mouse must have fallen into the container - it's about half a metre tall - and with the shock had her babies.

"She's eating the guinea pig food and then the babies are drinking her milk.

"We've seen her sitting on top of them and we've put a bowl of water in for them."

Her mum, Alison, added: "There is no way the mouse could have got out of the food container if we hadn't found her."

The family also has a parakeet, called Woody, and Rebecca has Poppy, a harvest mouse which has retired from a breeding programme at her school, Harrowgate Hill.

The children hope to release the mouse and its babies into the wild once they are big enough to survive.