Squeaky Clean
Only owning a hedgehog for a few weeks, I quickly realized that the poor thing got rather dirty. Small pieces of the cage liner and nesting materials easily became lodged between the quills that covered his back. Bathing a hedgehog can’t be that difficult. I remembered back to the instructions the pet store clerk told me. Use tear free soap, scrub him with a toothbrush, and use a flannel like fabric to dry him. Determined to make my hedgehog look as pristine as possible I pursued the necessary materials. I quickly found an unused toothbrush and the tear free soap, but the flannel fabric seemed silly. I’m not entirely sure what flannel really was, so I decided to use a regular old towel instead. After inspecting the towels tag,…
First I turned on the water faucet and let a few inches of tepid water collect in the bottom of the basin. Then I retrieved my hedgehog and slowly lowered him into the water. When his hind quarters touched the water, he made a mighty leap out of the sink onto the kitchen counter. I quickly reached for him, but trying to catch a wet hedgehog is like catching a bar of soap but covered with sharp spines.
After I caught him, I regained my composer and began to drizzle the soap across his back. The next step was to use the toothbrush to scrub him and work the soap to a lather. He seemed to enjoy this part of his bath. The toothbrush massaged his skin, as the dirt and grime was scrubbed away. Cleaning the underside of my hedgehog was a different story, considering he rolled into a spiny ball when I approached his stomach with the toothbrush.
Next I rinsed the soap off the small mammal. The water ran down his back and he shook like a dog. The last of the soap suds and water swirled violently down the drain. I took my soaked hedgehog and placed him in the middle of the terry cloth towel, and wrapped him tightly. Come to find out that was a mistake. The small loops in the terry cloth became entangled with the hedgehogs many spines. The scared hedgehog only made his situation worse by wiggling to and fro. I then began the arduous job of detangling the threads of the towel. The quills were freed one by…
