A Handful of Happiness

by Massimo Vacchetta

  Okay, I know, I shouldn’t have put Ninna and Ninno in the same pen. The right thing would have been to keep them separated. In fact, they could have mated and thus reproduced in captivity. And that wouldn’t have been good. But when I first started out with hedgehogs, I committed a number of errors, which later I made sure to avoid. Still, I was reassured by the lack of feeling between the two hedgehogs. And it worked out. No mating and no hoglets.

  The spring was horrible: torrential rains, incredible storms, little tornadoes. One night there was a frightening downpour that jolted me awake. Water came down in buckets, streams, rivers. Everywhere. Furious wind. Trees uprooted, split, fallen. Thunder resounded like an explosion. Window panes rattled trying to withstand the gusts. There were other, more sinister, less identifiable noises. Lightning broke the darkness in rapid bursts. Pandemonium. The lights even went off—the power had gone out.

  I worried that my two hedgehogs, outside, were in serious danger. I rushed to the pen, calling Ninna. I got totally drenched. In a flash of lightning, I saw a hedgehog coming toward me. It was Ninno. I scooped him up and brought him inside the house. I quickly wrapped him in a towel and set him on the rug by the fireplace, where a few logs still glowed. I added some more so he wouldn’t get cold. Then I ran back outside to look for Ninna. But she was nowhere to be found. I yelled for her tirelessly, my voice piercing the storm. And nary a trace of her. I didn’t give up and went on. I knew her well; I knew she, unlike Ninno, wouldn’t be hiding. I knew when I called, she would come. Where was she then? I was desperate.

  After two hours of intense searching, even beyond the pen and outside the yard, I went inside. There wasn’t much rain. The fury of the heavens was dying down. I was soaked, the tears running down my face mixing with the rain. Defeated, with death on my mind. What terrible thing had happened to my sweetheart?

  I went inside and over to the fireplace. I sat down on the carpet next to Ninno, who hadn’t moved an inch. I took off the towel I’d wrapped around him, slowly. And then, by the light of the fire—the power was still out—I saw. It wasn’t Ninno! It was Ninna! I hugged her and shouted, “Ninna! My Ninna! It’s you! And you’re alive!” I was overjoyed. But how could I have mixed them up? I guess with lightning as the only light, and the torrential rain, on that dark night…anything could have happened. Add worry, haste, and fear, and you get the picture. Maybe I should have known it couldn’t have been Ninno, who never came to me like that.

  I cradled Ninna in my arms. In total silence. And inside, I felt happy. I wasn’t too worried about Ninno. He always hid. Surely he’d taken shelter. God, my stomach was in knots from getting so upset…

  The rain stopped. The gray dawn arrived in a whisper, wrapped in a pearl light. I went to the pen. Ninno’s little eyes looked up at me from a hole under the olive tree. I gently petted his nose with tiny little strokes. I put Ninna next to him. All was right.

  A few days later, I helped my friend Matteo spay a cat. After the operation was over and the kitty was waking up, he and I got lost in conversation. I confided my dream of creating a wildlife preserve where hedgehogs could live happily. It was nice telling him about my fantasies, because he understood them. “Massimo, come with me. We’ll take the cat back to her owner, and I’ll show you a special place,” he said. I smiled. I was curious.

  We came to a spot near the Liguria border. The nature around us was spectacular: green hills, calming vales, forest-bordered plains. After reuniting with her cat, Susanna welcomed us with open arms.

  Susanna. Big blue eyes. Serene. I was struck by her culture and composure. A former student of Osho, the Indian guru, she spent her time in her house surrounded by roses and raspberry bushes and ancient chestnuts. I told her about my hedgehogs. She said I could release them in her garden when they were ready.

  I looked around again. The smells, the peace, the light: It was a perfect place. I was radiant. All three of us were. From then on, Matteo and I called that place “Paradise.” Susanna told me that there was a property for sale down the road that would be perfect for a reserve. It was 45 acres of splendor. I contacted the owner. And thus kicked off negotiations to buy a dream.

  20

  It all proceeded smoothly enough. The spring, too. It was time to launch my center to help hedgehogs in need. I once again called the Wildlife Recovery Center in Cuneo and set up a meeting. On the scheduled day, I went to the office of Remigio Luciano, founder of the center. I knocked, and from inside someone said, “Come in.” I went in, then suddenly wondered: Remigio Luciano—which is his first name and which is his last? My slight embarrassment at not knowing how to greet him instantly vanished, replaced by pleasant astonishment at the sight I found: An older man was smiling at me from behind a desk, with an owl perched on his shoulder.

  A little owl.

  The owlet left its position, hopping onto the desk and then here and there around the room. Then it returned to Remigio’s shoulder—yes, Remigio is his first name—and, in vain, tried to climb up onto his head. He allowed it as if it were the most natural thing in the world. At that moment, I thought, “I’ve come to the right place.” And my instincts were confirmed once Remigio showed me around the facilities. Everything exuded love for animals, for nature. And respect.

  The complex is located just outside the town of Bernezzo at the foot of a hill. Farther back, mountains frame the setting. The center spreads out lengthwise with pens and cages. Remigio explained to me that they only keep the animals for the time necessary to treat them. When they’re healthy, they set them free again. For those with permanent disabilities, they look for other solutions, so the animal can continue its life in the best way possible and with dignity.

  We walked along, and I saw animals of every stripe: wolves, deer, fallow deer, chamois, hares, tortoises, badgers, nutria, jays, herons, falcons, eagles, buzzards, and others—and others still. “We also get a lot of hedgehogs,” Remigio told me, as he pointed them out in their pens. “We welcome to the center all wild animals who need treatment. We’re here to help them. Sometimes they’re brought by someone who found them. Sometimes they’re reported to us and we go retrieve them ourselves. We’re always there to answer the phones and help out, day or night. Some years, something like sixteen hundred animals come through the center. And that’s no small number, you know? We need assistance. We have volunteers. But not enough. There’s never enough,” he continued. I listened, fascinated.

  I told him I didn’t like classifying animals as first and second tier, making distinctions between rare and common. He looked out at the horizon and nodded, remarking, “Every living thing has its own importance and unique purpose in the world.” We came upon enormous cages, not just wide but extremely tall. “We use these to rehabilitate larger birds for flight,” Remigio explained.

  I was won over by the place and also by Remigio, who had dedicated his life to helping wild animals. I stopped at one pen, curious: There was a little shed on one side and a deer was coming out. Practically crawling, it came over to the fence that delimited its territory. Close by, it reached out its nose, gently, toward Remigio. Big black and gold eyes, shaded by long lashes. “This is Minerva,” he said, greeting her with a tender look. “She’s been here since 2004. Look what a proud expression she has! And how elegantly she carries her head and neck, I’d say she has a…regal bearing. Yes, regal is the right word. I’m not the one who named her Minerva. It was my daughter. I don’t name the animals. A deer is Deer, an eagle is Eagle. I don’t like giving animals names, because it’s a way of humanizing them. At most, to identify them, I might say ‘the kestrel with a broken wing,’ ‘the vulture with the injured beak,’ but no more than that.”

  He invited me to sit with him on a nearby bench, and he told me Minerva the deer’s whole story. “She was only three or four days old when they brought her to me. She’d been mangled by a lawn mower. When a baby animal hears unfamiliar noises, it crouches in the grass, thinking it’s protect
ed that way. The mother perceives the danger and runs away, trying to get her offspring to follow. But she isn’t always successful. Minerva stayed there, unfortunately. And the mower wounded her atrociously. One little leg flew off over the grass. They brought her here along with her severed leg. After urgent aid, I rushed her to the vet. The fawn was anesthetized, and he operated on her from 6 p.m. till one in the morning. Three hundred fifty stitches, external and internal.

  “A couple days later, she was already better. She could support herself on her right leg, the one that was reattached. She couldn’t on the other. There was a cut tendon that was impossible to mend, and the leg couldn’t bear weight. But I was happy. She was saved. I nursed her with a bottle. Day and night. It was just me—at the time, there were no volunteers to take over for me. During the day, she followed me around, even though she limped, while I took care of the other animals.

  “One morning two weeks later, I approached the little thing to give her her usual bottle. Everything seemed fine. But I smelled something off. It was like rotting flesh. I was alarmed, so I rushed her back to the vet’s. Well, long story short, he had to amputate the leg. We got an artificial limb ready, but it wasn’t an easy situation. Plus, Minerva was still growing. What could we do? Put her down because one back leg was missing and the other didn’t work? Absolutely not: Minerva wanted to live. So I decided to keep her as she was, and, later, look for a place where she could live happily. I definitely couldn’t release her in the wild. With the little strength she had, there was no way she’d survive.

  “A few months later, I found a fantastic setup for her. One of our associates who had a home in the mountains agreed to take her in and care for her. I took her over. It would have been ideal for her—greenery everywhere and a comfortable shed built just for her. But Minerva looked at me wide-eyed. Then she started showing signs of nervousness. They grew stronger when I went away and she couldn’t follow me. Two days later, I went to take her back. She’d even managed to wound herself, so her stump was bleeding. Minerva missed me, she was very attached to me. As soon as she caught sight of me, she was eager to come to me. And after that, she was my shadow.

  “When she was two, I tried again. It failed miserably just like the first time. I resigned myself to the fact that Minerva needed to stay here. By then that was her destiny. It was my fault. I allowed her to get attached to me, compromising her possibility to live a better life somewhere else. I’m sorry for making that mistake. It won’t happen again. Here at the center, we take turns bottle-feeding and caring for the animals. This way there isn’t one figure taking care of them, and they don’t get attached to any one individual, but get used to different people.”

  I listened to his story attentively. Every so often, I looked over at Minerva, not far away. She was curled up in the grass. She was beautiful. And tame. Now and then her nostrils flared and she seemed to sniff the air.

  After a moment, Remigio added, “For me it’s important to try and give animals their autonomy. They shouldn’t depend on man. Far from it, they should be wary of him, because he’s their worst enemy. An animal can’t tell a good man from a bad one.”

  He was giving me wise advice straight from the heart. I understood that. But even though we were both motivated by a great passion for animals, we were different, and for me, in that moment, it was difficult to take in at once. Still, I had lot of material to reflect on. Remigio stood up, approached the deer, and stood there watching her. Then, he suddenly turned toward me and, pragmatically, said, “And now let’s move on to the star of the show: hedgehogs!”

  21

  Remigio and I walked back to his office. He told me, “Before you can start working to take care of hedgehogs, you need a bunch of authorizations.” We got to work right away, writing requests and filling out forms. My house in Novello would be an off-site division of the Cuneo Wildlife Recovery Center. “Various officials will come to inspect. And they’ll be strict. Rightly so,” Remigio said. Only once everything was in order would I receive official approval. We sent the first request to the province. When we finally finished the paperwork, I asked Remigio something that had been rattling around in my head: “How does it feel to release an animal?”

  “I’ve done it more times than I can count. And it’s never nice. No, I mean, it’s more than nice. Sorry, let me try to explain. The fact is, you always have to think of the animal’s well-being. I’ll tell you about the last time—that’ll make it more clear,” he said.

  “It was a falcon. As always, I’d checked the atmospheric conditions, thermal columns, the animal’s weight and muscle mass. Everything was favorable. So I let it go. It took flight. The higher it rose, the more confidence and speed it seemed to gain. It made circles in the sky. It whipped around, slicing through the air. In that clear blue sky, it searched for the right current. And it found it. With its wings wide and still, it let itself be carried along for a while, like it was suspended. I thought, ‘What a wonderful feeling that must be.’ And then, it flew off, peaceful. Northwest. Past the trees in the distance. By then it was just a dark silhouette, getting smaller and smaller. A dot on the horizon.

  “Well, in that moment, you’re happy for it. But at the same time, you also feel this bitterness well up inside. Because it’s a separation. And you’re consumed with fear, because you know something could happen to it in the future. I’m always afraid freed animals will come to a bad end. And I wish I could know how their lives go on. Once, before freeing a vulture, I had a GPS put on his back, at my own expense. Four thousand euros, not chump change. Yeah, some people might go to the casino and put a figure like that on red or black. I preferred to put it on a vulture’s back. We’re all free to make our own choices, right? But it’s a real satisfaction to know it’s alive. And still flying. It’d been rescued in an area of Stura di Demonte Valley. And, when it was time, that’s where I released it. The GPS is solar powered, so it recharges automatically. Now that vulture is in Huesca, Spain. At least that’s what the latest signal showed.”

  As Remigio spoke, Carla—one of his most passionate and tireless volunteers—entered the office. She’d heard him telling the story and, turning to Remigio, said, “Tell him about the snake eagle.”

  “Ah, yes!” he resumed. “We’d rescued a short-toed snake eagle, a big raptor. We treated it. And then we returned it to the wind and sky. Three years later, it was brought back to us. It’d had another accident. We recognized it beyond a doubt by the bracelet we’d put on one of its legs. Healed and back in shape, we released it again. There, I’ll say it again, it feels good to know that they go on living.”

  When we said good-bye and I left for home, the waning sun had already set the sky ablaze. As I drove, I thought back on everything Remigio had said. His parting words echoed in my mind: “Animals are amazing. They’re a treasure. All humanity should respect them. And respect nature. Otherwise we’ll reach a point of no return. Maybe we already have.”

  A few days later, the series of inspections began at my house. The gears of bureaucracy had been set in motion. At the start of June, I bought several large cages that I set up in a room of the house. That wing would be devoted solely to hedgehogs. The center was becoming a reality. Choosing a name wasn’t hard: La Ninna. It couldn’t have been anything else! There it was, the La Ninna Hedgehog Rescue Center.

  The permits arrived, signed and countersigned. And then the first hedgehog. One morning Carla, the volunteer I’d met at the Cuneo center, called me: “Massimo, we picked up a dying hedgehog on the side of the road. I think there’s little hope of saving it. He’s in a bad state, poor little guy. I’ll have it brought to your place anyway. Who knows…” That hedgehog arrived. Carla was right: It really was in horrible condition. It was a very thin female with dark spines. She lay on one side pretty much motionless and struggled to breathe, her mouth open. Every once in a while, she let out a wheeze. She had, among other things, a very serious case of pneumonia. I did everything I
could. I attempted the impossible, initiating a series of specific treatments, and then ran out to get a nebulizer to help her breathe. I spent the rest of the day and the whole night by her side. There was clearly some sort of mycosis around her eyes. She kept them almost shut, but her sad gaze, between those half-lowered lids, pierced my heart.

  Dawn hadn’t completely erased the dark when the hedgehog showed a few little signs of recovery. Not much, but it fed my hopes. I took some short videos on my phone—which I’ve kept to this day—to document her condition. Carla called me for news. “She’s still with us,” I responded. She couldn’t believe her ears. She was happy. I added, however, that I couldn’t say she was out of the woods. But it already seemed like a miracle. The little thing was also exceptionally infested with ticks. She had them everywhere. Over the weekend, Greta came over. I introduced her to Selina, the sick hedgehog. Yes, I’d already given her a name. I couldn’t help it.

  My girlfriend and I could have spent our Saturday night having fun together. Instead, we set to work and, one by one, pulled the ticks off Selina. An endless process. Afterward, Greta counted them: over two hundred! They had undoubtedly seriously contributed to bringing the poor thing down so low.

  The days passed, and Selina improved, finally able to stand up on her own. Once she was in good shape, I put her in the pen outside with Ninna and Ninno. Selina and Ninna challenged each other a little, huffing and puffing. After establishing that she was the older and more experienced one, and therefore owed a certain respect, Selina began to build her nest. It was extraordinary: She took the hay in her mouth and then arranged it masterfully under the rosemary bush—to and fro for a while, as she moved slowly, until the job was complete. A stupendous nest, with one opening at the base and another at the top.