So you've seen those cute pictures of those brown and cream colored hedgehogs that are absolutely adorable, the hedgie is probably holding a strawberry, or nibbling at a raspberry, or curling cutely around someone's thumb? Pictures like this perhaps?
At least...
our's isn't...
In fact, our little baby hedgie, is Albino. So he is a very bright white color, with bright red eyes - which kind of turns people away from really how cute he truly is. He's kind of terrifying when you first see him.
Which is how he got his name...
Azael - most commonly referred to as Azazel - is a Fallen Angel, who fell after being tempted by a woman to commit sin, and then imparted many great secrets to man and cohabited with women - or so we found on the great interwebz.
Okay, so we tried to name our demonic looking hedgie after a demon... We call him Azzy though! Isn't that cute and not at all cruel?
SO
We thought to ourselves, "We shall have an adorable baby hedgehog who is kind of creepy looking, but also eats things adorably, so all shall be good in the world!"
WRONG!! WRONGITY WRONG WRONG WRONGNESS!
What Azzy does most often is sleep. Especially during the day - hedgehogs are nocturnal creatures - so when WE are up and about and ready to play with an adorable hedgehog, he's resting. When we're sleeping and not wanting to deal with inside out pincushions, he's eating and pooping and running on his wheel.
He does that a lot too - pooping, I mean. We wake him up so we can socialize him, or bring him out to public places to show him off, and all he does is poop, for like half an hour. It's kind of obnoxious, really. And the biggest problem, unlike other rodents who like to keep their poo concentrated in one location, he just kind of goes whenever, wherever and doesn't care if he's walking through it, curling into it, or spreading it about the container or hand he is currently in. We've washed more poop off of him than I care to admit. You're SUPPOSED to be able to litter box train these guys, and believe me, we have the litter box suitable for hedgehogs and have good clay litter - it's the stuff Je uses - and all he wants to do is burrow through it and throw it all around the cage.
Oh, and that myth about animals not pooping where they eat?
WRONG!
He poos right on his food bowl without discretion. Thankfully, with the bowl we bought him, he doesn't poo ON the food, just on the bowl itself.
And my god, does this little guy eat. We got him at about 6 weeks old, so he's truly still a baby maxing out at about 10-12 weeks now. I should have guessed that a growing hedgie would eat and eat and eat, kind of like a growing human, right? Well, this guy eats almost 1-1 1/2 Tbsp. per day. And you think, "oh, that's not really that much." You have to remember that this is a creature who two weeks ago could fit in the palm of a single hand and today not only require the use of both hands to simply HOLD him, but some creativity in keeping him from crawling up my arm because he didn't truly fit in both hands.
Thankfully, I opted for the larger food dish, thinking that we just may not have to put food in there as often. If I had gone for the next size down, we would need to be putting food in there almost twice daily.
Have I mentioned the spines yet?
Baby hedgehogs are afraid of EVERYTHING. And what they do in defense - because they just don't bite - is pull their unibrow of quills right down over their eyes, curl up as tightly as is physically possible - pointing quills in every direction in the process - and make a sound called huffing. This sound is nearly impossible to describe, and I don't know how to accurately describe how to immitate the adorable little sound my hedgehog manages to make when he's upset, but it's more cute than terrifying and it's about the only sound he makes. But as he's doing this, you say something like, "Aww, how cute" and go to touch him. Then, he jumps at your touch, and stabs you with dozens of tiny little needle like quills.
(The feeling is analogous to being pricked with thick sewing needles.)
And those little things HURT... A LOT
And the temperature?
That's just about the most important part of a hedgehog life (aside from keeping them away from heights - they will stupidly walk off of anything, no matter how high, they have no concept of heights) - the temperature. We don't tend to like COLD weather - which is why we are both fond of SC. However, even our apartment - which is supposed to be at an ideal temperature for hedgies - is too cold for little Azzy. So we had to buy the thing a heating pad, and then fleece to insulate it so that it wouldn't burn the cage we had built for him. Regulating his temperature has been more important than we realized. We have been keeping the windows open and at night we see him huddled under his heating pad - yes under, he won't lie on it, has to be under - and during the warmer part of the day, he comes out and runs around - did I say day? I meant warmer nights. ;)
Anyways, that's basically life with Azzy the hedgehog. As far as I can remember. I'm sure you'll hear of all of our adventures with him. He's come to work to visit my work buddies a few times, and likes to get out. So I'm sure pictures and stories will be soon to follow!
By the way, here's our little guy.
No comments:
Post a Comment