Thursday 1st July 2010

Today I found a small ball of moss in the middle of the day. When I picked it up to put it in the green recycle wheelie bin - it moved!

Turns out it was a tiny abandoned baby hedgehog.

Its eyes and ears were still closed. He was extremely cold and I assumed dehydrated and hungry.

My husband searched the surrounding area for signs of the mother or the nest with no luck.

It wasn't going to live unless we got some fluids into it and I knew we couldn't give it cows milk, so water would have to do for now!

Ever resourceful I knew we had an old 2.5ml syringe in the cutlery drawer from years ago when the children were young and we needed to measure out medicines accurately.

I knew there was a reason we don't throw things away!

Of course it was covered in the usual debris thats found in all kitchen drawers, so we cleaned it in boling water.

The little hedgehog managed to drink some of the water and thats the first step.

The next move was to search the internet to know what to do. We knew it wouldn't be weaned so really needed milk, but where do you get hedghog milk?

I found a great website for the Britich hedgehog presevation society and they suggest watered down goats milk as hedgogs cannot tolerate lactose in cows milk.

Our local petrol station in the village stocks goats milk so the rescue started.

The hedgehog weighed about 1oz (28gms) and its spikes were still white so I estimated the hoglet (isn't that a great name for a baby hedghog?) was probably somewhere between 1 and 2 weeks old.

All night I fed him about every 2 to 3 hours - its worse than having a baby!

He was still alive the next morning - wow!

I contacted the local vets and they gave me a contact name and number for a local hedgehog rescue centre. I wasted so much time and energy leaving messages and no one ever phoned me back, so its either me get on with it or the hoglet dies.