The Hedgehog's Dilemma

by Hugh Warwick

  There is, therefore, a degree of inevitability about hedgehogs becoming the number one cared for wild animal – and it follows, then, that there should be no surprise at what has happened in the USA where this hedgehog-nurturing zeal has erupted into perhaps the world’s most counterintuitive pet-keeping craze. Who would have thought that a smelly, grumpy, solitary, nocturnal and spiny animal would sweep a country into a frenzy of pet-hedgehog-keeping?

  PART TWO

  Obsession

  CHAPTER

  FIVE

  A Brief Interlude at

  the International

  Hedgehog Olympic Games

  Buttercup was a strange-looking hedgehog. And not just because she was small, blonde and with the rather prominent ears of an African hedgehog. She had a hump; a little spiny dromedary. She was also a star of the International Hedgehog Olympic Games. Having scored well in the sprint and the hurdles, she was about to reveal her class, matching her physical prowess with the artistic demands of the floor exercises.

  Some might find it hard to imagine the IHOG. The (human) Olympic Committee certainly were not so sure and wrote to the (hedgehog) Olympic Committee in 2005, asking that they ensure that no one was under the impression that there was any endorsement on the part of the official (human) body. Having witnessed IHOG in the flesh and the other Olympics on TV, I can assure you that there is no chance for confusion. The contestants are far better-behaved and less involved with performance-enhancing drugs at the IHOG.

  Even so, the sexes have to be segregated. Male hedgehogs do everything first and only when they have finished are the females allowed to compete. The reason for this is simple: male hedgehogs are easily distracted. If there is the scent of a female, there is little hope of getting any sense from the male (is this just hedgehogs?).

  On the richly patterned carpet in a function room at the Double Tree Hotel, Denver, 5 metres of plastic track had been laid. The crowd of people leaning forward might have been off-putting to less resilient athletes, and to be honest some did end up going in the wrong direction, but Buttercup completed the sprint with determination. Placed in her plastic ball (like a large version of something a hamster might play in) by her owner, Zug Standing Bear, she resolutely followed the track, gaining momentum before rolling off the end to the silent cheers of the excited crowd. (Silent-cheering is a useful technique when in the company of potentially highly strung individuals, and involves waving both hands, if available, vigorously in the air. It was originally developed as a form of sign language for people with hearing difficulties, but works just as well with nervous hedgehogs.)

  The hurdles were more of a challenge, requiring a little coercion. Up on stage a row of tables was covered with a 3-metre partitioned run. Each partition had a hole which was incrementally further off the ground than the one preceding it and the hedgehog had to either complete the run in the quickest time or get as far as it could. The owner could encourage, lure and generally persuade the hedgehog that everyone would be happier if it cooperated. The dangling of a mealworm, a small maggoty grub favoured by both hedgehogs and their owners (more on that later), in front of the snout was allowed, but actual contact was forbidden. Buttercup was one of the few to complete the course.

  A word of warning: if you want to go and check the results for yourself, IHOG is, confusingly, also the abbreviation for ‘interference hedgehog’, one of a family of signalling molecules that mediate animal development and is linked to human cancers.

  So to the floor exercises. Buttercup was returned to the carpet and placed among the tools of her art. There was a see-saw, a plastic horse, a tunnel, a ball and a mat. Hedgehogs were first placed on the mat and the clock started. They then had two minutes to impress the judge, who was noting both physical abilities and the style with which actions were completed. Walking through the tunnel is great, but it can be done with greater or lesser flair. Sniffing the horse is all well and good, but doing it with some style, that makes a difference. Strategic self-anointing is highly regarded, though defecation is not encouraged. The marking system seems a little esoteric, but after the eighteen contenders had been through their paces, there was no doubting the winner. Buttercup had made her human so proud. As Standing Bear clutched this little rescued hedgehog to his bosom, along with her rosette, I wondered if I could see a little moisture in the corner of his eye.

  ‘I almost fell over when the IHOG Gold Medallist was announced,’ he said. ‘She stumbled and fell and ran and ran. Her body is tiny and malformed, but she has a heart as big as all outdoors.’

  Buttercup is a hedgehog who does not know she is disabled. She was discarded and ended up at Denver Dumb Friends League. She has scoliosis, severe curvature of the spine. When Standing Bear picked her up, he assumed that she had a tumour on her back, there was such a pronounced hump. And when the fl-ray was shown to a vet, he assumed that this must have been taken from a dead animal, the twist was so extreme. But Buttercup was very much alive that night.

  Standing Bear was my host for the Rocky Mountain Hedgehog Show, of which the IHOG is a highlight. He runs the Flash and Thelma Memorial Hedgehog Rescue up in Divide, high in the mountains above Colorado Springs, and had inducted me into the arcane world of hedgehog lore before I was thrust into the heaving heart of obsession. I later found that there were only around sixty people (and about 100 hedgehogs) at the show; it certainly felt like a lot more.

  Standing Bear’s home is amazing. A couple of kilometres from metalled roads, it is so tranquil, sitting on a hill above a small lake, its golden wood glows in the morning sun. Deer and foxes loiter and kingfishers splash into the lake. However, the fairly safe bear made no appearance while I was there.

  Standing Bear shares this haven with up to sixty-three hedgehogs and Virginia, his wife. They were amazing hosts, at least Standing Bear and Virginia were, welcoming me like a long-lost friend and turning me into a new-found one. Virginia married young, had three daughters and then reinvented herself by inventing a new discipline that now has international attention, forensic nursing. When I asked if she minded me just getting on with making supper as I was hungry, she illustrated perfectly how distant her previous existence now is. ‘I would rather do an autopsy than cook dinner,’ she said.

  Standing Bear’s history is no less remarkable. He started telling me some of it on the ride back from the airport and I really was not sure if he was just pulling my leg. Born into a mixed family, pulling all the best bits from Mohawk, Wampanoag, Scottish and Irish ancestors, he joined the army and made his way up the ranks in the Military Police, working in Germany, where he learned an awful lot about wine (he has a cellar of stunning bottles, the 1945 Baron Rothschild, complete with V label, must be among his most prized possessions). In Russia he shared a flat with Shostakovich, giving him a life-long love of classical music, before being sent to Vietnam to investigate war crimes committed by his own side. This was the beginning of his great change, when the appalling behaviour of some of his own men made him question whether he was in this fight on the right side. ‘I talked to the Vietcong,’ he explained. ‘They just wanted to be able to grow enough rice to feed their children.’

  After Vietnam, Standing Bear returned to his people and herded sheep with the Navajo, spending time with the medicine men and women before becoming involved with a land-rights struggle. But the military were not finished with him and, thanks to a stint as a bodyguard to President Gerald Ford, he ended up with a series of commissions, rising to the rank of major-general, before finally giving it up and focusing his energies on teaching investigation and forensics.

  So it was obvious that Standing Bear was destined for a life with hedgehogs.

  ‘It was Virginia’s fault,’ he explained. ‘Back in 1993 she saw one in a shop and brought it home with her – that was Flash. The deal was that she would take him with her, and she did, tucking him into a pocket as she got on to planes, keeping him quiet during lectures.’

  But as her career advanced, so did the calls
for her to travel further afield. Standing Bear had to look after Flash. And then there was the first rescue. ‘Usual story,’ he said. ‘A student was off to join the Peace Corps, forgetting that they had a responsibility back here, so I took Thelma in and that was the beginning of it all. And it would have been churlish to turn down the next one, who inevitably became known as Louise, as they were two darn independent ladies.’

  How did someone who was exposed to some of the worst aspects of humanity in Vietnam end up like this? ‘Well, you can either harden your heart or learn lessons,’ he explained. And it is not as if hedgehogs were the beginning of it all; he had already been involved in wolf rescue – which seems, somehow, more in keeping.

  Ironically, Virginia feels she has lost her husband to hedgehogs – though as he points out, he doesn’t play golf, and that would have been far worse. And while she may fume about the time he spends clearing out the large Perspex boxes that are the home of the rescued hogs, she has also seen a hedgehog, Little Flash, become an informal mascot of the Colorado Chapter of the International Association of Forensic Nurses. ‘Many of my colleagues,’ Virginia said, ‘are sexual assault examiners. To help pull ourselves from the bleakness that this view of life can present I pointed out that the hedgehog is a great symbol, a female hedgehog cannot be sexually assaulted.’

  My invitation to Colorado followed a meeting of the European Hedgehog Research Group in Germany. One of the contributors was Donnasue Graesser from Yale, who had been looking at heritable problems facing hedgehogs. She persuaded the Hedgehog Welfare Society of the United States to fly me over for the Colorado show in Denver in 2007. Organized in conjunction with the International Hedgehog Association, this is the biggest event in the hedgehog calendar.

  I was flattered to be invited, but a little daunted. The nearest I had come to a pet hedgehog was in the care of Janis just outside Blackpool, and that was grumpy. Yet I really wanted to find out what was behind it all. Why were people so keen to make a pet of a hedgehog? I have been a hedgehog lover for many years, but have never wanted to change the relationship to one of domestication. In fact, part of what I love so much about hedgehogs is their wildness. Others have written eloquently about the wildness of place – landscape that is ‘will’d’, still retaining its will. Well, that is something so true about the hedgehog; it is a self-willed little animal. And, more importantly, they smell.

  To help me get to the bottom of the obsession I joined Standing Bear as he cleaned out the hedgehogs. There is a sizeable and well-heated shed that houses the bulk of the rescued animals; even when the snow lies thick outside, the hedgehogs need to be kept between 18 and 27 degrees centigrade. A few others are in the more intensive-care area abutting his office. The hedgehogs either share or have their own ‘condo’ – a wooden enclosure or plastic tub containing a few essentials: water, food, a shelter made from the bark of half a tree trunk, a fleece blanket and a wheel.

  The wheels, which many hedgehogs seem to adore, are glorified hamster wheels, 30 centimetres in diameter, and are the subject of many intense engineering debates. There are some commercially available and there are still attempts being made to perfect the design. The design has to take into consideration the fact that while the hedgehogs like to run, they are not as sure-footed as more conventional wheel-runners, such as rodents. ‘Perhaps that is why people like them so much,’ Standing Bear muses. ‘They are just a bit bumbling and clumsy, like us humans.’ Still, some hedgies will run for hours at night. I did suggest that this energy could be utilized, perhaps they could help light the hospital.

  Standing Bear introduced me to some of his favourite charges. This is where I first met the improbably athletic Buttercup and got to see the fl-ray that clearly shows her meandering spine. Then there were Fred and Wilma. Both now over four years old, they arrived in an appalling condition from California, each with a gangrenous leg.

  Standing Bear explained that hedgehogs are illegal in California, and around the United States there is considerable disunity with regards to hedgehogs, with seven states outlawing the prickly beasts. California apparently bans anything exotic, apart from the people, that is. The state is understandably protective of its agriculture – which happens to be made up of largely introduced species. They have labelled African hedgehogs with a ‘D’, for detrimental. And it would not be hard to imagine domestic hedgehogs ‘going wild’. Similarly in Arizona, the environment is not too different from their central African home. Hawaii, too, is understandable, with so much biodiversity being destroyed by various immigrants. But Maine and Vermont remain a bit of a mystery, while Pennsylvania’s legislation is so complex that anything could be deemed illegal and they have even executed possession orders to seize these inoffensive critters. Standing Bear then pauses, spits an imaginary plug of tobacco and slips into a remarkable impression of a county sheriff from Georgia: ‘We’ve had it with all these exotic species coming here and raising Cain.’ But as Standing Bear points out, Georgia’s problems are almost exclusively insect-based. Perhaps a few more insectivores would be useful.

  Lucky flying hedgehogs can travel up front with a human – though they must be confined within a container that will sit under the seat in front and need their own ticket (international travel is a problem because the passport photographs all look so alike to humans). But not all airlines are happy, only allowing dogs and cats to travel this way. One passenger got her hedgehog on board by calling her a ‘Tasmanian quilled cat’. Thank goodness for the limited scope of zoology lessons in some American classrooms.

  If the hedgehog is not allowed in the cabin, or is travelling solo, then they have to be put in with the freight and need a veterinary health certificate. Most of Standing Bear’s hedgehogs arrive this way and he is on first-name terms with the folk at the Frontier Airlines Air Freight terminal.

  The vet gave Fred and Wilma little hope, but also thought that the legs looked like they would not need amputation, as they would drop off on their own accord. Which they did. And now they have a special place at the rescue. ‘Wilma is my chief petting hedgehog,’ Standing Bear explained. ‘I can line up forty children at a school and she will jump forty times, each time she is touched, and this will cause each of the forty children to jump as well. And they will remember the first time they met a hedgehog.

  ‘And this is Pepper,’ he said. ‘Now she is a strange one.’ Standing Bear put on a hairdryer (it is the easiest way to dry a hedgehog) and Pepper emerged sharply from the little fleece bag in which he sleeps, ran to his water dish and sat in it. ‘You see that? Every time I put this on – or the vacuum cleaner – he jumps into the water. I think he thinks the noise is a threat to his water.’

  Earlier in the year Pepper stopped rushing out to protect the water and Standing Bear was concerned. Sudden changes in behaviour can indicate that something is not quite right with the animal. But as closely as he checked, he could find nothing wrong, until he noticed Pepper was in a very slightly different fleece sleeping bag from normal. And as soon as he was returned to his usual bag, he returned to his water-protecting duties. Standing Bear is convinced Pepper was on strike, offended by the change in circumstances.

  Over a glass of very fine Riesling that night Standing Bear reminisced about the hedgehogs that have asserted their personality so strongly on his life. He has invented an entire mythology about them, stimulated by his military heritage; many hedgehogs receive ranks, promotion and commendation. He has even written a book set in a hedgehog world. It is the first of the Hedgehog Chronicles, The Gathering: Secretly Saving the World.

  Apparently the hedgehog characters first hit him when he went to an airport to rendezvous with a woman who had been given an ultimatum by her fiancé – me or the hedgehog – and was handing Spiker into the custody of Standing Bear. Spiker made a bid for freedom and took refuge under a ticket counter at Dallas airport. His grumpy disposition coupled with his creative escape attempts put Standing Bear in mind of a marine major-general he had met, so that was th
e beginning of that world.

  My favourite story, however, was of Critical Bill. He was dropped from a passing car on to a school playground in Fort Collins, northern Colorado. As the car drove off, two inquisitive children approached and saw a ball of spines. Being responsible, they went off in search of a teacher, who was naive in the ways of the hedgehog and was alarmed by the hissing and spitting noise emanating from the impenetrable bundle, so went and retrieved the Principal, who was also perplexed, until the noise started again, at which point he dialled 911 and was put through to Hazardous Materials Emergency – HAZMAT – who set in motion a complete emergency response that included commandeering a cement lorry. The plan being to empty the contents over the suspect device that had the experienced army folk scratching their heads.

  The responsibility to take a closer look fell to supervisor Tom Buckleton, who crouched behind his shrapnel shield as the cement lorry approached. Twenty-five years with Army Explosive Ordnance Disposal units and he had never seen anything like this. But then something even more surprising happened. With the lorry came some very welcome shade for the ball of prickles and Bill the hedgehog relaxed, lifted himself up and extended a tentative snout into the shade. Tom Buckleton almost fainted as he saw the bomb grow legs and a nose, and that is how Critical Bill was named.

  Throughout my time with hedgehogs it has become obvious that they are blessed with great character and these pets are no different. But I was still to be convinced about the general petability of the animals.