Dear Past Me: The Chaos of Finding a Baby Hedgehog

Dear Sarah from last October,

You're currently standing on the back patio holding your third cup of lukewarm coffee, wearing those faded black Lululemons with the tiny hole in the left knee that you swore you were going to throw away six months ago. The dog—our lovable but profoundly dumb golden retriever mix—is barking hysterically at a pile of wet oak leaves near the garden hose. You're ignoring him because Leo is currently trying to eat a fistful of sandbox sand and Maya is screaming about a worm.

But you need to put your coffee down right now. Because under those wet leaves is a tiny, breathing, fiercely spiky little potato.

It's an infant hedgehog. A wild one. Or a "hoglet," which honestly sounds less like a majestic creature of nature and more like an insult Dave would hurl at someone who cuts him off in traffic. You're going to panic. You're going to want to do a million things at once to save this tiny woodland creature, but you need to take a breath, stop letting Leo eat sand, and listen to me.

Dave's completely unhelpful salmonella panic

The second you yell for Dave to come outside, he's going to run out in his socks, see the little spiky ball, and immediately start yelling about diseases. He's going to act like you've just discovered radioactive waste in the hydrangeas.

And look, for once in his life, my chronically anxious husband is actually kind of right? My pediatrician actually brought this up at Leo's four-year well-check when I confessed that my son actively tries to lick frogs. She told me, in that very gentle, non-judgmental tone that makes me feel like I'm failing, that wild animals and especially reptiles and little yard critters can carry salmonella. Like, heavily. They're just little walking bacteria factories. So when you bend down to investigate this breathing pinecone, do NOT touch it with your bare hands. Go to the garage and put on those thick leather gardening gloves that you bought during your pandemic gardening phase and never actually used.

If you touch it with your hands and then go make Maya a peanut butter sandwich, we're going to have a catastrophic gastrointestinal situation on our hands by Tuesday. Anyway, the point is, glove up, get a deep cardboard Amazon box, and line it with an old towel. Not a nice towel. The ugly brown one.

The milk thing is a complete and utter lie

Okay, here's where I need you to really listen to me. Your first instinct is going to be to run into the kitchen, grab the blue jug of two-percent, and pour a cute little saucer of milk for the poor shivering thing. Because that’s what Beatrix Potter taught us, right? That’s what every British children's book and vintage cartoon in the history of the world has shown. Little Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle drinking milk from a porcelain saucer.

It's a lie. It's all a massive, dangerous lie orchestrated by Big Dairy or something, I swear to god.

I ended up calling the emergency exotic vet clinic down on 4th Street—which, by the way, cost me a fifty-dollar consultation fee just to talk to a receptionist who sounded like she was twelve years old—and she practically screamed at me through the phone. Apparently, these little guys are profoundly, deeply lactose intolerant. Like, their tiny digestive tracts lack the enzymes to break down cow's milk at all. If you give them milk, they'll get severe dysentery and dehydrate and basically die in your cardboard box while you watch helplessly. The guilt would literally crush you. You would never recover.

Instead of milk, you just need to get that disgusting, gravy-heavy wet cat food that we keep in the pantry for the neighborhood stray. Scoop some of that onto a paper plate and put a tiny, shallow jar lid of water next to it. That's it. That's all they can process. I think the vet mumbled something about them needing high protein and no dairy because their stomachs are super fragile, but honestly I was just so relieved I hadn't poisoned it yet that I kind of zoned out on the biology lesson.

Also, if the spiky potato is smaller than an apple and it's out in the cold evening, it's definitely an orphan and needs a wildlife rescue immediately.

And if it's out staggering around in the broad daylight covered in flies, it's dying and you need to drive it to the vet right now.

Trying to manage the kids during a wildlife crisis

Maya is going to completely lose her mind with excitement. She is deep in her woodland fairy phase right now, and she's going to think the universe has gifted her a magical familiar. She will immediately run inside to grab her Colorful Hedgehog Bamboo Baby Blanket because she logically assumes the wild animal wants to see pictures of itself.

You need to stop her. Don't let her put the wild, dirt-covered, potentially flea-ridden animal on that blanket. I know she loves it. Honestly, it's my favorite thing we own right now too. I bought it a few weeks ago because it’s made of organic bamboo and cotton, and it's so stupidly, luxuriously soft that I occasionally steal it to use as a lap blanket while watching Netflix. It magically keeps stable temperature, which is a lifesaver because Maya sweats like a teenager in her sleep, and the little blue and green pattern is seriously chic instead of looking like a clown exploded in the nursery. But it's NOT a nest for a wild critter.

Meanwhile, Leo is going to be completely ignoring the magical nature moment because he has discovered a particularly deep mud puddle next to the downspout. He is currently wearing his Organic Cotton Baby Bodysuit—the sleeveless one that I genuinely really like because the envelope shoulders mean I can yank it down over his body during a diaper blowout instead of dragging it over his giant head. It's super stretchy and breathable. But it was also white this morning. Now it's essentially camouflage. Just let him roll in the dirt. You have bigger problems right now.

If you're wondering how to replace the clothes your kids inevitably destroy while "helping" with backyard wildlife rescues, you can just browse around for more organic baby clothes later. But focus, Sarah.

To keep Leo away from the box, you'll probably toss him that Panda Teether Silicone Baby Bamboo Chew Toy that's been sitting on the patio table since yesterday. It's fine. It's just okay. It's food-grade silicone and totally safe, but let's be honest, he never really chewed on it for teething relief. He mostly just uses it to aggressively whack the sliding glass door. Babies are weird. Just let him bang it against the glass so you can focus on the animal.

Quilling sounds like medieval torture

While you're staring at this little guy in the Amazon box, you're going to notice he looks kind of patchy. Like he's losing his spikes. I naturally assumed he had some sort of horrific yard mange, but I went down a massive Reddit rabbit hole on my phone while waiting for the rescue lady to call me back, and I learned something wild.

It's called "quilling."

Apparently, when they're born, they're completely blind, deaf, and their spikes are hidden under this weird fluid-filled layer of skin so they don't absolutely shred the poor mother from the inside out during birth. Nature's epidural, I guess? Anyway, a few weeks later, they go through this phase where their soft baby spikes fall out and the thick adult quills push through the skin. It's exactly like human teething, except instead of a dull ache and some drool, you literally have armor piercing through your back. No wonder they always look so grumpy.

Things I wish I never Googled about nature

Oh god, the Reddit rabbit hole got so much worse. I started reading about people who genuinely breed these things as domestic pets (the African Pygmy ones, not our chunky European yard friend), and I'm traumatized.

If you've a pet one that gives birth, and you stress the mother out within the first ten days—like if you clean the cage too loudly, or look at her wrong, or breathe too heavily—she will literally eat her young. She will just cannibalize the whole litter. Can you imagine? I get overstimulated when Leo asks me for a snack while I'm unloading the dishwasher, but I've never considered eating him. It's absolutely horrifying.

And if you've to hand-rear an orphan, you can't just feed it and put it to bed. You have to take a warm, damp cloth and physically rub its tiny belly and nether regions after every single meal to stimulate it to pee and poop, because they literally don't know how to do it themselves without their mother licking them. Like, hell no. I barely survived potty training Maya using M&Ms and a sticker chart. I'm absolutely not manually expressing the bladder of a spiky rat at two in the morning.

The happy ending

Look, past Sarah, you're going to do great. You're going to keep the dog away, you're going to distract the kids, and you're going to use the ugly towel. The lady from the local wildlife trust is going to drive up in a beat-up Subaru Outback about an hour from now. She's going to tell you that you did exactly the right thing by putting a hot water bottle under exactly *half* the box (so he could crawl away if he got too hot) and that offering the cat food saved his energy.

She's going to take him to a sanctuary, fatten him up, and release him in the spring. You don't get to keep him. Maya will cry for about twenty minutes, but then you'll promise her pizza for dinner and she'll forget all about it.

Breathe. Drink your cold coffee. Put the milk back in the fridge.

Love,

Sarah

P.S. If your kids suddenly demand everything in their life be woodland-themed after this entire chaotic ordeal, just save yourself the headache and stock up on Kianao's gorgeous organic baby blankets so they've something soft to cuddle that won't give them a bacterial infection.

Random Questions I Desperately Googled That Afternoon

Is it legal to keep a wild hoglet if you find one?
No, absolutely not, and honestly why would you want to? My vet was very clear that keeping native wildlife is illegal in most places without a rehabber license. Plus, they smell, they need massive amounts of live bugs to eat, and they cover their own spikes in their toxic spit. Just call a professional.

What should I do if my dog brings me a baby hedgehog?
Panic quietly. Then immediately check the little guy for bleeding or puncture wounds. Dog mouths are full of terrible bacteria, so if the animal's skin is broken, it needs antibiotics from a wildlife vet immediately or it'll get a fatal infection. Put it in a high-sided box, wash your dog's mouth out if you can (good luck), and call a rescue.

Can I put a heating pad in the box with it?
Only if you're incredibly careful. I read that you should never put the heat source under the *entire* box. If they get too hot, they can literally cook because they're too weak to move away. Put a warm water bottle wrapped in a towel under just one corner so they can scoot over to the cool side if they need to.

Do mother hedgehogs abandon their babies if you touch them?
In the wild, apparently not usually because of the smell of humans, but more because the nest gets disturbed and she panics. But in captivity? Oh yeah, they'll absolutely abandon or, like I said, eat them. So just don't touch them unless they're clearly orphaned and freezing.

How long do they stay with their mothers?
They're fully independent by about seven weeks old. Seven weeks! Meanwhile I've a seven-year-old who still needs me to open her string cheese. Nature is wild.