Wednesday Night Stories: The Hedgehog Story

Have you ever seen a hedgehog?

If not, don't bother to Google Image it, I've already done it for you: Click Here.

Hedgehogs are adorable. This is one of the things I learned in college.

Fall of my freshman year, my friend Matt started posting poll questions on his dorm room door. We determined answers to pressing questions like: Should Wisconsin become a state? (voted down), Are ponies pretty? (Yes, by one vote), and early in the Spring semester Matt had stumbled upon a picture of a hedgehog and discovered their irresistible adorableness.

This lead him to post that picture on his door under the caption, "Lets get a hedgehog." Beneath there was a Yes and a No column. And the next 24 hours would prove pivotal.

Within two hours the Yes votes were unanimous and Hedgehog Fever had hit 2nd Floor Cole Hall. Quickly two of our friends made a plan to go see if hedgehogs were actually that cute in person and Jordan and Kristen mapped out a bus route to go to a pet store that carried 'hogs the next morning.

This was a tragic misstep. We sent the two most impulsive people in our group of friends and worse yet we sent no "voice of reason". Jordan had changed his major an average of 4 times a semester that year and Kristen, though she is an engineer, also has been known to eat those dissolvable tablets that turn into dinosaur shaped sponges. Not exactly bastions of responsibility.

And its no surprise that by the time Kristen and Jordan got to the pet store, the topic was no longer looking at a hedgehog, but purchasing a hedgehog.

Matt had posted the picture on his door around 3 PM the day before. By 3 PM the next day, Kiki the Hedgehog was living in our dorm.

This lead to a series of problems. The first night of the hedgehog's arrival we were reading the Owner's Manual and while playing with, holding, and generally touching the hedgehog discovered two things. 1. Hedgehogs can live up to 13 years on captivity (Jordan had hoped it would die in a year) and 2. You should never, ever, ever touch the hedgehog in its first day or two in a new environment. If it doesn't get the proper chance to acclimate to its new surroundings its may never do so.

This is what happenned to Kiki. She ended up spending about 95% of her time curled up in a ball, spines pointed out, terrified of her surroundings and owners. Not exactly the cuddly pet of our dreams (but she did love to eat erasers!).

Along with our hedgehog care missteps, we also discovered (though we knew this all along) that bringing living animals into the dorms is not just discouraged but against University policy! And our dorm administration found out about Kiki within the first five days, and although we were not exactly covert in our public discussion of Kiki, we're still pretty sure someone ratted us out from spite (probably because they wished they had a pet that could perfectly immitate the sound of boiling water and sit motionless all day). We still have suspects.

But nevertheless, her days were numbered. Kiki had to go. Unless a plan was enacted. A rescue. An underground hedgehog transport.

So on the day before the deadline for Kiki's removal four of us hatched a plan (3 after our lookout fell asleep . . . ). The three of us stayed up until after 3 AM and when everyone else was asleep we secretly transferred Kiki, cage and all, over to Kristen's dorm and put her in a closet covered by some clothes.

And for the rest of the year, not a word was spoken about the incident as the rest of our friends continued to believe Kiki had moved in with Jordan's brother.

Oddly, enough as I type this I realize this wasn't the only time I moved a live animal across campus in the middle of the night in my college career. Strange. But that's for another time.

So here's to you Kiki, even though you were eventually dropped off at an exotic pet store in Minneapolis, you were one beautiful, boring animal!