Strange story about cash, trash and a mattress

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - A treasure hunt in the trash was the talk of Israel Wednesday after a woman said she had accidentally dumped a mattress stuffed with $1 million in notes.

Identified only as Anat, the woman at first told Israeli media she had replaced her mother's mattress as a surprise, learning too late about the stash of cash.

She then went off to search local landfills, so far fruitlessly, for the old mattress, she said.

Questioned later on television news, the woman said she had known about the money -- which she called "a substantial sum," not $1 million -- and blamed a "very serious trauma involving banks" for her mother's unusual choice of hiding place.

Asked how she could have thrown away the mattress knowing about its contents, she told her skeptical questioner "My brain simply blew a fuse."

(Writing by Dan Williams, editing by Tim Pearce)