Mario on the go: 2008

Wednesday, September 24, 2008

Hedgehog days

Well, just to add to our menagerie of creatures, a young hedgehog came and knocked on our door on Sunday. Just a little fella (yes, he has turned out to be a boy), quite lively but with a number of tics on his back and neck (yuck). He seemed to be hungry and ate a large amount of dog food. I scoured the internet and it didn't take long to find out that bread and milk are dangerous for hedgehogs as they are yeast and lactose intolerant, and that the slight wheeze he was sporting probably indicated pneumonia, lungworm or both.

Well, we tucked him up in a hamper with newspaper and straw and he was alternately asleep and sometimes awake, eating and so on. He escaped from the hamper so Andrew made him a gorgeous hutch out of a metal frame with big gate hinges. Because of the wheeze, all the advice said that he need medical treatment so today, Andrew and Saskia took him off to a very friendly wildlife sanctuary at Stratton Strawless where he had his gender confirmed and also the fact that he is hypothermic and not very well (pneumonia at least).

So tonight has been spent trying to warm him up. We have brought the hutch in, filled it with towels, newspaper, hot water bottles, put the heating on and a little greenhouse heater, blamkets over the hutch and all. You may think he might boil but we are checking his comfort zone at 5 minutes intervals. He probably wishes we would go away. Anyway, his cold little feet are getting warmer. Apparently he is a boy, about 12 weeks old, and if we let him go he would not survive the winter so he is another addition to our foster family - along with Richard, Natalie and Tilly. We think his name is Angus but Saskia doesn't agree.

We will let you know how he gets on - he needs to get over his pneumonia first