"Touch me, and I will
impale you so hard your grandchildren will perforate!"
It's morbid, but you might
hear that if the puffing white pin-cushion could talk instead of
hiss. The defensive "huffing" isn't just show: this spiny
tank bleeds with immunity to snake venom, and devours any animal
smaller than itself.
"In the wild, they
kill cobras," the pet store worker tells me.
While the African pygmy
hedgehog I poked probably never saw "the wild," varying
species of hedgehog range free everywhere in the Old World
continents, including the famous home of the cobra, India. In 2009
hedgehogs in Hebrides devastated the island bird populations,
attracting animal control specialists armed with lethal injections.
The British Hedgehog Protection Society reports today that hedgehogs
thrive even in urban habitats; the Society promotes
"hedgehog-friendly" gardening information to encourage this
survival. Whether a menace or an attraction, free-roaming hedgehogs
rule their habitats with fierce spunk.
The up-for-adoption
African pygmy hedgehog I met at the pet store had suffered six months
of neglect, making him more fierce than spunky. Hedgehogs are
natural loners--even a male/female pair should never be housed
together without supervision--but they warm up, I was told. Taken
with the urchin and unable to resist the challenge, I bought the
neglected animal. A t-shirt in the cage became my scented diplomacy,
and within a few weeks the hedgehog became comfortable with my smell.
Eventually, he began to play with me and eat from my hand.
Even now, my hedgehog
huffs every now and then just to show his impressive spines,
reminding me that underneath the cuteness pumps a heart full of
poison resistant blood. This fist-sized animal demands
respect--something not a lot of pets get these days.
And while his ferocity is
humorous, respect is definitely something hedgehogs deserve.
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