Opossum found living in 7-year-old's bedroom for 3 days before parents find it

COLUMBUS, Ohio — When a child tells a parent that there’s a creature living in their bedroom, it’s easy to see why a parent might not believe the child is talking about a real live creature.

>> Read more trending news

So imagine the shock and surprise when a family in Ohio north of Columbus actually found an opossum living in their daughter's room.

Caitlin Burch’s story about the incident last summer went viral last week after she tweeted about it in response to a missing hamster story from Chrissy Teigen.

It seems Burch's 7- and 10-year-old daughters insisted there was something living in their bedroom, according to news reports.

"They used the words 'creature' and 'rat,'" Burch told BuzzFeed News. "The 7-year-old insisted that there was something. ... The 7-year-old would not sleep in her room. They sleep in their room every night, but I told her she could sleep in the guest room that night if it made her feel better."

When Burch and her husband, Bryan first checked the room, they didn’t find anything, but three days later they discovered the marsupial in the closet.

"It had crawled into one of the dresses hanging in the closet," Burch said. "It was peeking out of the neck hole."

"It's very much an 'I told you so' moment for them," she admitted. "We realized after the fact that we should have noticed some things. Some toys knocked over. Dog's food missing, so we know it had been in the rest of the house too. The dog never made a peep the whole time it was in the house."

It took Bryan Burch a couple of hours to remove the opossum from the home, but when he finally caught it, he let it go outside and hoped it wouldn't return.

Cox Media Group