Yes, really. An unfortunate woman has found the body of an even more unfortunate mouse sewn into the hem of a dress she purchased from Zara.

24-year-old talent agent Cailey Fiesel, who lives in Manhattan, bought two dresses from a Zara store in Greenwich, Connecticut back in July. Several months later however, she smelled a rat (sorry). When she wore one of the dresses to work and noticed a “disturbingly pungent odor” emanating from the garment. 

It wasn’t until she examined the dress more closely that she located the source of the stench – “I saw the little leg that was coming out of the seam that I had touched, which was really horrifying,” she told the New York Post.

“I felt something brushing up against my leg and thought it was a string from the seam of the dress,” she said. “When I went to pull at it, it didn’t feel like a string. I then felt the hem of the dress and it felt like there was some sort of sensor... I turned up the seam of the dress and saw it was not a sensor and that it was a mouse.”

Fiesel panicked and rushed to the bathroom to change into a spare set of clothes which, thankfully, she had brought into work.

Understandably, Fiesel thinks Zara is taking the Mickey (sorry again) with all of this and, with the help of her big cheese attorney (okay, I’ll stop it now) Adam Deutsch, is filing a lawsuit against the company.

Apparently she’s been a “wreck” ever since and has developed a rash that has been diagnosed as a “rodent-born disease.” Fiesel says the retailer owes her “duty of care” to produce garments that “free from defects, including rodent infestations”, which is fair enough, really. 

We reached out to Zara who told us “Zara in the USA is aware of the allegation and is investigating the matter further. The brand has stringent quality controls and health and safety standards worldwide that are followed and met in manufacturing, including stitching and ironing.”