West Midlands Hedgehog Rescue

And now...as they say...for something completely different!

Yeah, yeah, I know this blog is all about skin and eczema and TSW, but I want to share my hedgehog story with everyone and this blog (with its almost 500,000 hits) would seem the logical place to do so.

So...my story started yesterday, on a wet, dull Autumn day. I was in the house, homeschooling my little one, when I saw my neighbour dash past the front window and then crouch next to my lawn with her phone, taking photos of something in the grass. On closer inspection, I could see it was a tiny hedgehog.

I went out to take a look and my neighbour said that she ran out because some magpies were attacking the hedgehog. The hedgehog looked really small and sick and was covered in big grey ticks. I went inside to get a box to put it in and popped it inside my shed.

I phoned the local hedgehog rescue, WMHR, and the lady, Joan, was very helpful. She told me to feed the hedgehog and give it something warm to lie on, which was critical in keeping it alive. I used an empty plastic pop bottle, which I filled with hot water and wrapped in a towel. The hedgehog loved the warmth and snuggled up to the hot bottle. I later found a microwaveable wheat bag, which was even better. I also gave her some cat food, which she gobbled up; an encouraging sign.

I spent the rest of the day nursing the sick hog until my husband got home and we drove it to the rescue centre. Joan was lovely and clearly cares very much for these little creatures, sometimes getting up every 2 hours in the night to bottle feed the babies. She said our hedgehog was very sick and underweight and would have died without intervention. At this time of year, they should weigh 600g to get them through the winter, but ours weighed a mere 260g. She said she would keep our hedgehog warm in her house and pull off all the ticks (very brave!) and also give her antibiotics to help her get well.

I was so worried about our little hedgehog, I was actually scared to phone Joan the next day because I thought it may have died in the night and I would have broken my heart over it. Luckily, she'd survived the night thanks to Joan's love and attention and had also had most of her ticks removed. She was eating well, so her prospects looked good.

I'm so grateful to Joan and people like her who sacrifice their time to help little creatures, so I thought I'd give something back by letting people know about WMHR on this blog! Please visit the WMHR website, where you can find links to Joan's Amazon wish list and also their paypal info (friendsofwmhr@btopenworld.com) It would be great if my blog readers could donate a few pounds or dollars to their cause, or maybe buy some much-needed items off the Amazon list.

PLEASE- if my blog has helped you in any way, please donate a few pounds to the hedgehogs and help save my baby hog and others in the same situation. Help the hogs!

*Also, if you want to help WMHR for FREE, you can vote on the ARK website where they are giving away free food to hedgehog charities and you just have to vote for your favourite. So vote for West Midlands Hedgehog Rescue and the site will send them some packs of free food. Cool huh?