No matter what holidays or holy days you celebrate,
no matter if you feast under palm trees or icicles,
alone or with family or friends,
with noisy exultation or quiet introspection,
may your days be filled
with warmth and wonder,
with healing and happiness,
and much joy.
And I hope you like the cards I did not send to you, because I spent the money on trying to save a baby hedgehog!
Sonic is doing very well so far. Fingers crossed!
He was found in October, when he must have been around five or six weeks old. He weighed only 210g at that point. Hedgehogs lose around 30% of their body weight during hibernation, which is why so many hedgehogs born in autumn don’t make it. A safe weight for hibernation is around 750g for young hedgies. There was no way for Sonic to hibernate safely. So we (my garden neighbour J. and I) took Sonic in. At first we kept him in the garden house, because it was still nice and warm at the end of October.
However… because hedgehogs hibernate, their metabolism reacts strongly to temperature, which means they stop gaining weight when temperatures fall below 15°C (59°F). That was the case here at the beginning of November. So Sonic had to move somewhere warm and safe. Luckily, S. (another garden friend) agreed to take Sonic in and keep him in her warm basement and feed him until he reaches a safe weight.
For Sonic’s sojourn in S.’s basement we bought a giant plastic box on wheels with a lid for Sonic to live in. We drilled big holes into the lid and the sides for sufficient airflow. The box is easy to clean, and most of all: hedgehog-safe. Some hedgehogs are real escape artists and manage to scale walls over a foot high! We also got him a plastic potato box as sleeping quarters, in which I cut a hedgehog-size entrance and some additional holes for sufficient airflow. This fancy hedgehog bedchamber is nice and warm, and most of all, it’s also easy to clean.
Of course we also bought an enormous supply of cat food and hedgehog kibbles and dried meal worms (as per the recommendations of hedgehog rescue organisations). Last but not least, to line the hedgehog box and fill up his bedchamber, we supply an endless amount of old newspapers. Bedding you’d use for rabbits and guinea pigs isn’t recommended for hedgehogs because some of them eat that, and in straw it’s harder to see if there are any issues with a hedgehog’s digestion. So newspapers it is! To make things a little more homely or interesting, we cut up some newspapers into stripes to stuff his bedchamber comfortably and give him something to root around in looking for extra meal worms.
Once a week, J. and I head to S. for weighing Sonic. The last time was just before Christmas on December 23rd. Sonic weighs around 640g now! He has more than tripled his initial weight and looks like a proper hedgehog by now instead of an itty-bitty ball of bristles and spines.
With a bit of luck he can move back to the garden in January and hopefully hibernate for a few weeks yet. Because that’s the tricky part of saving hedgehogs: To stay healthy, they need to hibernate. If they don’t, their metabolism and hormones go out of whack and they can get sick and die.
So here’s hoping that Sonic continues to gain weight quickly, and that he’s willing to give hibernation a chance in January!
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