THE WHEEL

Watching me distrustfully

Hedgehogs, like all mammals, need and love to play. So, we decided to buy a special wheel for small mammals and big rodents. 
We thought it was a great idea, since she was becoming too fat because she didn't do any exercise at all.  She was supposed to enjoy running around the dining room and inside the wheel, but whenever we left her on the floor, she stayed on a corner in her typical "stone-camouflage mode".
What happened with the wheel? At the beginning, she totally ignored it and whenever we tried to put her inside, she went out immediately (most probably she was suspicious of the new-plastic smell). proressively, she started to use it as a shelter. The problem was we weren't able to make her come out afterwards and she ended up coiling as a ball and she was so fat that we couldn't take her out through the holes!

Trying to hide under the wheel

When the summer came, we decided to leave her outside the terrarium all night with her  food and water supplies and a squeaky sound together with one similar to running stones in the middle of the night made us learn she had started to use the wheel properly. In the morning, we saw in disgust, that our little lady had her paws all dirty with her own poo, there were also some bits on her quills, the wheel was all dirty with her pee and poo and the floor around the wheel was full of small paw-prints. 
In conclusion, when she runs in the wheel she thinks she's leaving back behind. It was funny to follow the paw-prints and see where and what she had been doing all night. It was not so much fun to clean all that and even less when I found out the stains on the floor wouldn't come out by just mopping the floor.

SHE LOVES APPLES!

Four-toed Hedgehogs, aka African Pigmy Hedgehogs (Athelerix albiventrix, which literally means 'white-belly hedgehog'), when in captivity, eat cat food, small worms and crickets, boiled chicken, hardboiled eggs, boiled vegetables and ripe fruit.
Not all fruits and vegetables are healthy for them; for example, grapes are perjudicial for their kidneys
The fruits they can eat are banana (of binding nature), melon, watermelon, pears, apples, raspberry, strawberry, kiwi, mango, and papaya. The vegetables they can eat are: boiled carrot, boiled peas, mashed potato, turnip, radish, cucumber and alfalfa.

Each hedgehog has different likes and dislikes. For example, my hedgehog loves chicken ham, Starking (red delicious) apples, strawberries and baked sweet potato, but she hates banana and potato.
They also have different reactions when you offer them these foods. Usually, the first time they taste something, or every time they taste something tasty, they start to annoint themselves and trully you might think they are having a fit and convulsions, but in fact it is usual in them and nobody knows why they do it, some think it is as if they wanted to mask their smell or something... Fortunatelly, they don't do this when they eat insects!!
On the contrary, when they do not like something, they may just ignore it, move their nose aside from the food you are holding or lift their plate with their nose and turn it upside down (yes, my hedgehog does this when you give her banana, she is very bad tempered, sometimes.)

HER FIRST STAYS WITH GRANNY

This summer I had to leave for a weekend to see my hubby (who was working in the Pirenees) and, since travelling makes Eirlys sick and it is colder in the Pirenees, we decided that the less traumatic thing for her would be to leave her at home and then have my in-laws coming to feed her and take her out of the terrarium for a while.
The first day everything was more or less okay, but the second day, she learnt that her 'granny' was putting her back in the terrarium for the whole night, so she bit her blouse and wouldn't let her go! In the end my mother-in-law managed to let herself go, but Eirlys went really angry and put everything upside down that night, so the poor woman had to clean everything the next day...
A week later I left for a whole week, and we decided that it would be better to leave the naughty thing loose the whole night -just as if I were home- and have my mother-in-law come in the evenings to take her out and in the mornings to put her back into her terrarium. The thing worked better, but it seems she didn't like her granny much because she told us that Eirlys wouldn't let her pet her, and what's funnier, she said that our baby sort of purred at her, which in fact is the sound she makes to intimidate her fiends... or her food.
Poor woman, she made all that sacrifice and the naughty girl wouldn't show her a single sign of gratitude...

HALF A YEAR WITH HER NEW FAMILY

This is her vet's ID card photo (November 2008)

We were feeding her with Royal Canin Baby Cat until she was 4 months old so that she didn't grow too fat (she was already 700 gr), so we changed to Royal Canin Kitten. She didn't quite like the change because the flavour wasn't so attractive to her and the food balls wer a bit bigger. We had to mix both types of food, progressively giving her more quantity of the new one. But she's so clever that she sorted out the food and only ate the 'Baby Cat' food! One day we ran out of the old food and had to leave for a whole day, so we came back very late at night and she had eaten the new food... what else could she do, poor thing?
Then, when she was 6 months (that's the adolescence for a hedgehog!), we had to change the type of food again. Those food balls were much bigger but they were more savoury, so we didn't need to mix both types of food because she accepted it right away.

Her adolescence months were tough for both of us: she learnt to bite me when she didn't like something I was doing to her and she was angry more often, a real teenager!
Click here to see more pictures of this adorable pet.

THE FIRST MONTH AT THE NEW HOME

I didn't know what a hedgehog eats or how to take care of her, so I used a website called La web de los erizos to get assistance and information. You can also find very useful information in La Senda del erizo. There turned out not to exist suitable food for African hedgehogs in Spain, so I learned to my surprise that I would have to feed her with cat food O_o
The funniest moment was when I went to the animal shop to buy a terrarium, a plate for cats, a bird trough, hay and cat food... the poor shop assistant asked me 'But what animal have you got?!'

ARRIVAL AT A NEW HOME

Eirlys Brown is my pet hedgehog. She was born in Sevilla on 6th March 2008 and was sent to me by her breeder on 7th May. At that time she was so small and light that, when the messager brought her, I thought the box was empty ;P
Her name is Welsh for snow flake, for snowflake brown is the colour of her fur and spikes.
(btw, the pic is a little bit blurred because I had to take it with almost no light and no flash since she gets easily dazzled; it's a nocturnal animal.)