Hercules the African Pygmy Hedgehog

I'm not sure if I adopted my hedgehog at the beginning, middle or end of the hedgehog craze, but it was something I had on my bucket list for a couple of years when I went into a pet supply store and saw a real pygmy hedgehog for the first time. As soon as I laid eyes on him, I knew I had to have him. I was going to call him Harriet, but as he was a boy, the name 'Hercules' stuck as soon as my boyfriend suggested it; partly because I love the Disney film and because it was apt for a tiny but very strong little creature.

He cost £150, not including all the accessories that come with owning a hedgehog, but it seemed pretty straight forward to look after him. Kind of like having a hamster.

A hedgehog needs:

• a large enclosure (in the wild they can roam up to 10km in one night)
• a wheel that doesn't have rungs (don't want his paws to get stuck and break)
• a water bowl (better than a bottle because some hedgehogs can get their tongues stuck)
• a food bowl and high quality dry cat food
• soft fleece to line the cage (NEVER anything like sawdust as this can get in their eyes)
• puppy pads to line the cage under the fleece (it absorbs urine really well)
• a house to hide & sleep in
• a heat mat/lamp if your house doesn't have regular heating on all the time.
• toys- anything that rattles, can hide food in, climb over or on

Things I didn't expect when getting a hedgehog:

1. they can be fussy eaters
2. they're pretty hard to pick up if you're not used to it
3. they're pretty noisy
4. they pooh a lot for something so small, then they run through their pooh and you have to clean their cage every day otherwise it stinks
5. they self-anoint
6. they are really cuddly and enjoy snuggling into your neck/armpit/elbow
7. they are expensive to get treated by a vet as they are classed as 'exotic'
8. that I could fall so in love with something so small

1. Fussy eaters

Hedgehogs can eat dry cat food, and adore mealworms. They apparently also like fruit and vegetables, although you have to be really careful about what to give them so you don't poison them (e.g. raisons, avocado and grapes are big no-nos). However, Hercules didn't and sometimes he became incredibly constipated; this meant I had to encourage him to eat pumpkin to get his tummy going. I became quite familiar with the baby food aisle a bit sooner than expected.

2. Handling your hedgehog

Unlike wild hedgehogs, African Pygmys' spines aren't anywhere near as sharp (believe me, I've held a fair few by now!) but the apprehension of touching those sharp prickles are still enough to put a lot of people off. Picking up your hedgehog wrong can mean an unfortunate puncture wound (I had a couple, one even got pretty infected!) but with practice it becomes second nature to scoop them up round their sides and lift so their weight is distributed easily in your palms. I did use a towel at first but the floppy flappy nature of a towel meant it scared Hercules and caused him to get even more cross. I saw that some people have trained their hedgehogs to climb onto their hand, but had I tried that I think I'd still be sat next to his cage with some stale biscuits turning to dust in my palm.

3. My New Noisy Neighbour

I quickly discovered that Hercules, unlike a hamster, was not very quiet. Even asleep, he would squeak in his dreams or snore, and would regularly rustle about in his little house, scratching about as he got into a more comfortable position. Hedgehogs are mostly nocturnal, so during the night he would be scratching about his cage, ripping up any bits of cardboard or rolling his toys around as well as loudly crunching his cat biscuits and spending hours running on his wheel. This meant that although I only had a rented room in a house share, I had to move him into my en-suite to be able to get to sleep at night.

The noise didn't stop there, though! Unlike wild hedgehogs, if Hercules got frightened by noise, a quick movement, a powerful smell, anything at all, he would furiously pop and hiss 'pfft pfft pfft' while sticking out his spines and rolling himself into a ball. If you've never seen it, it really is something to behold and is a wonderful example of how a small, vulnerable animal has evolved to keep itself safe.

4. Pooh All the Time

I've saved you from an actual image but hedgehog pooh is very much like brown toothpaste out of a tube. And they can pooh a lot. Usually, straight after they've woken up, then again if they've been exercising, and then if they've eaten, and if they're not empty yet, again before they sleep. Half their cute little bodies are just pooh ready to be squeezed out.

One little 'hack' I used, especially if Hercules was going to be handled by other people, was to let him have a swim in my bathroom sink to encourage him to get it all out of his system to avoid accidents on unsuspecting guests. Swimming was also a great way to relieve the regular issue of constipation and keeping him clean; it was a weekly occurrence because of how mucky he could get just by trogging about in his own filth (I did clean him out every day, that's just how much pooh he could produce in one night!). Apparently some hedgies enjoy bath time, Hercules never did.

5. The spectacle that is self-anointing

If you’ve never seen a hedgehog self-anointing before, you’d be forgiven for crossing yourself and scrabbling about for a bible and/or crucifix. When a hedgehog self-anoints, it pretty much bends itself in half trying to reach its back with its tongue in order to spread a spitty, foamy mess onto its spines as a means of ‘camouflage’ or familiarisation with its surroundings. Hercules would do it quite regularly when he encountered unfamiliar items or scents and it became quite normal to see, even if it does make him look momentarily possessed.

Another little trick he used to do, and I won’t say much more on it, is that he could reach his starfish shaped genitalia with his mouth. That behaviour and the frequency of it certainly wasn’t something I was prepared for when I adopted a hedgehog!

6. Cuddles with a Pincushion

You know your hedgehog is comfortable with you when they relax their spines and splat their limbs out so you can stroke them, which is an odd, plasticky sensation but not unpleasant. Hercules used to do this whilst lying on my chest- I wonder if it’s my heartbeat that soothed him- or else, if it was a cold day, he’d find a cosy corner to curl up in, like an armpit or elbow. I bought a fleece lined pouch that was meant for ferrets to carry him around with me during the day if I was at home. Honestly, there was nothing more relaxing for me than to have a cuddle with Hercules, stroking his little paws at the end of a long day. Bonus if he gave a little cat-like yawn!

7. Expensive Exotics

We’ve had lots of pets in my family as I was growing up but I don’t think we took any of them nearly as often to the vets as I took Hercules. And it’s not as simple as treating a hamster. Oh no. Hedgehogs are classed as ‘exotic’ animals so you have to find a vet trained in this speciality, which means I had to travel some distance to get Hercules seen in times of need.

The first time I took Hercules in was for mites, he was scratching in a rather dog-like manner and it was distressing to see his skin all flaky around his spines. Although he wasn’t the most enthusiastic patient, on this occasion the vet could easily see what was wrong with him despite Hercules remaining spherical during our visit. Prising open a curled up hedgehog is incredibly difficult, and for more thorough diagnoses there was the threat of anaesthetics which meant an even heftier bill. Luckily, he became more familiar with the vet surgery- where he was somewhat of a celebrity due to how unusual he was- and when I had to take him in for treating wounds from his self-mutilation the vet could see enough of his soft underbelly to know what to treat.

Yes, along with self-anointing, hedgehogs can self-mutilate- not for emotional reasons, mind! Hercules did not like my perfume which must have rubbed off from my skin onto his fur on his chest and he tried to pull out huge tufts of it to get rid of the smell. This resulted in surface wounds that became infected and needed topical treatment and antibiotics. Once they’d just about healed, the scabs would irritate him and the whole process would start again. It was quite distressing, particularly when it bled a lot but unlike most mammals, hedgehogs can’t wear a cone of shame. I also found out the very hard way that you don’t put human ointments on animals; I tried some Germolene to keep his wound clean and he promptly swelled up, cue an emergency vet visit.

I don’t want to even try to calculate how much of the vet’s salary I paid over Hercules’ lifetime!

8. Emotional Support Hedgehog

Hercules was my sidekick, and for two and a half years he was with me on car rides, train journeys, my plus one to a wedding, he came in to work, inspired my teaching and was a reason to get out of bed- if only to remove the pooh that stank out my room after he’d had a busy night in his wheel! Animals are extraordinarily good for mental health and having Hercules in my life really helped me with mine. He became a part of my identity and was a conversational starter/talking point, everyone know I had a hedgehog. So when I moved across the country to start my new life as a married woman, I assumed that Hercules would be part of my next adventure too.

However, not two weeks in to our new lives in a new home, I realised he wasn’t eating or being himself. He was sleeping more than usual, and when he did come out of his hideyhouse he was panting and ‘splatting’ his body on the floor of the cage.

He’d gone into hibernation mode before, when the boiler had broken at our previous house and while I had been at school it had snowed, the house had become incredibly cold. He was breathing very slowly and refused to uncurl from his ball. It took hours of him warming up slowly against my skin under a blanket to get him back to normal. Hibernation for African Pygmy Hedgehogs is incredibly dangerous as their bodies cannot cope with the shock of the process; they don’t store enough fat and don’t know how to come out of it. It was a really tense time and I’m so glad he recovered relatively quickly- that’s why hedgehogs should be kept with a heat pad or heat lamp to avoid hibernation happening.

However, in a warm early September, this is not what was wrong with Hercules. I rushed him to an exotics vet 20 miles away to be told he was suffering from pneumonia. I have no idea how he caught it but it was devastating to hear; had it been the stress of a new home? Had I put his cage in the wrong place? For 2 days they gave Hercules oxygen treatment while I drove him back and forth, however on the third day, an hour after leaving him there, they called to say he was suffering too much and that it was more humane to euthanize him. Did I want to see him? No. I didn’t think I could cope seeing him struggle so much. I felt awful, thinking of him without me in his last few moments but I trust the vet and nurses were there so he wasn’t alone.

My last memory of Hercules is of his final morning. We hadn’t got very far on our drive to the vets’ when he started scrabbling frantically in his little travel box, something he hadn’t done the previous times we’d been on the road. So I pulled over, took him out and let him cuddle on my chest under my shirt while I drove the rest of the way. He seemed to calm down then, although he was still panting and cold, and I didn’t take him out until it was time to hand him over at the surgery. I think that’s a slightly better memory than seeing him struggle and making him suffer for longer while I drove the half an hour to get there.

I was truly heartbroken when Hercules died, but with that ending began my new life; I had an emotional support husband to take on Hercules' role. I didn’t want to get another hedgehog right then but I missed him so much that I decided to volunteer at a local wild-life rescue centre, where I cleaned out and weighed wild hedgehogs and saw just how different those creatures were to my little domesticated hog!

So if you’re thinking of getting a hedgehog, I hope this story will leave you a bit more prepared for what life with a hedgehog is actually like. They smell, they’re fragile and they’re noisy, but they are so loving and their little spines find a way of sticking so far into your heart that they become part of you. It’s been two and a half years and I still miss Hercules so much.