Hedgehog Photos I Took In Spike’s Lifetime

Yesterday marked the one-week anniversary of the day that I last saw Spike the Hedgehog alive. It fell on a Sunday, which was a day I usually devoted to the weekly cleaning of Spike’s cage and I moved him out of his cage and into his outdoor playpen. Once I finished cleaning his cage, I removed him from his outdoor playpen and put him back in the cage. He overheated earlier because I had left a window open while the outside temperature rose to a high of 85 degrees Farenheit with very high humidity. I closed the window and turned on the air conditioning and once I finished the cage cleaning and the sun went down, Spike seemed okay. He managed to go inside the pink plastic igloo he used as his bedroom so I thought that all was well.

Monday morning I notieced that Spike didn’t even touch his mealworms, which were his favorite food. Monday evening Spike didn’t emerge from his igloo but it was also very hot and humid outside and I know from past experience that in extremely hot weather Spike tended not to even emerge until well after 11 p.m. So I wasn’t that concerned as I changed his food and water yet left the unopened Easter egg where I stored the mealworms. Tuesday morning I saw that Spike still hadn’t opened the Easter egg full of mealworms so I thought that something was up. Since hedgehogs are nocturnal, I decided to wait until after dinner before I investigated. By dinner he still hadn’t emerged so I went over to his cage and called out his name. He didn’t respond with any kind of snuffling sound like he usually did when I talked to him. I bumped the side of his cage and found that he didn’t make any of the hissing noises he usually makes whenever I accidentally bumped into his cage or changed his food and water. I then opened his cage, lifted his igloo and found that he was dead.

Earlier on the same day that I last saw my pet hedgehog Spike alive, I visited the Baltimore Comic-Con. Among the various items for sale in the Artists Alley was this table that was full of handcrafted jewels that were made to resemble the Chaos Emeralds from the Sonic the Hedgehog video games. They were a bit on the large side (I thought that the best use for them would be as paperweights because they looked too big to wear in a necklace) but they were visually stunning looking.

I’ve been slowly doing one final cleaning of Spike’s cage. So far I removed his litter and threw it in the trash. (I inspected his litter as I scooped it out and found that, unlike other weeks, I didn’t see any hedgehog droppings among the litter clumps. I still threw the clean litter in the trash as a precaution just in case Spike died of some kind of a contagious disease. I don’t know what killed Spike and I saw no evidence of blood or oozing pus or any other kind of injury or infection. It’s possible that he simply died of old age but since I didn’t have anyone do an autopsy on him so I’ll never know exactly why Spike died.) I plan to do a thorough cleaning of his cage and furniture using Lysol in order to kill any germs that may or may not have had a hand in Spike’s death. Once I finish this special cleaning, I’m going to pack up his cage and furniture and put it all in the attic for the time being.

Right now I’m going to take some time off from being a pet owner while I get over Spike’s death. I would like to own another pet sometime in the future but I haven’t decided on whether I would get another hedgehog (If I did this, I would make sure that I adopted a baby hedgehog instead of an adult like Spike was when I brought him home to live with me because I hope that, with a baby hedgehog, I would have this pet for longer than I had Spike) or if I would get a dog. When I was a teenager my parents had a half-Labrador Retriever/half-Chesapeake Bay Retriever named Napoleon and, while he was a rambunctious dog, he was basically a sweetheart. When I was in college and I lived in off-campus housing I had a housemate who had a dog named Michelle and I got along really well with Michelle. (My time with Michelle was short-lived. Michelle’s owner went out of town for a couple of weeks of following the Grateful Dead’s latest tour and the dog was placed in the care of another housemate who was a bit of a flake. This housemate tried taking Michelle for a walk along a very busy highway without a leash and the dog suddenly decided to bolt after some car and she ended up getting hit by one of the cars.)

I also once had a pet parakeet as a teenager named Baby, who managed to coexist beautifully with Napoleon. (Both the parakeet and the dog basically ignored each other.) It’s possible that I may decide to get a parakeet or some other kind of bird instead of a dog or hedgehog.

All I know is that cats are out of the question for me because I am allergic to them. Any member of the rodent family (such as rabbits, chinchillas, guinea pigs, hamsters, etc.) is also out of the question for me because I have a couple of electronic rodent devices in my home that emits high-pitched sounds that humans can’t hear but they are very offensive to rodents. I had to buy them from the hardware store a few years ago after my home suffered from a sudden invasion of field mice who chewed up rolls of surplus paper towels, chewed through boxes of food in the pantry, and left their droppings everywhere.

In any case, I’m just going to take my time deciding on who will be my next pet. It’s highly unlikely that I’ll come to any kind of a decision for at least six months.

Yesterday after I attended church, I went to Target to look for a storage box that’s big enough to house Spike’s cage and furniture while I keep it up in the attic. I found the perfect size storage box (it was the largest box that the store had in stock) then wheeled my car to the checkout line. On the way to the checkout line, I found this new Monster High doll that’s totally ironic for me in light of Spike’s recent death. Here name is Howleen Wolf, she’s the daughter of the Wolf Man and the younger sister of Clawdeen Wolf, Clawd Wolf, and Clawdia Wolf.

Here’s the ironic part. Like the other Monster High dolls, Howleen Wolf comes with a pet of her very own. This particular pet happens to be a hedgehog named Cushion.

A doll with a pet hedgehog. That is pretty ironic. If Spike hadn’t died, I might have even been tempted to buy Howleen Wolf. This time I left the doll package on the shelf. I just wasn’t in the mood of collecting anything that was hedgehog-related other than taking the above two photos with my smartphone.

For the 19 months I had Spike I had gotten into taking smartphone photos of every hedgehog related items I could find on the store shelves as well as collecting Internet graphics of anything with hedgehogs. While hedgehog products weren’t as prevalent as—let’s say—dogs and cats, there were a sizeable amount of hedgehog products I could’ve bought if I wanted. (In reality I didn’t buy too much hedgehog stuff because of limited space in my home. I’m in the process of doing extensive decluttering of my home and starting a new hobby where I collected a lot of stuff was the last thing I wanted to get into.) It was pretty cool to see the amount of hedgehog there is out there.

First off is the main hero of the Sonic the Hedgehog video games. I confess that I played those games long before I even had the idea of getting a pet hedgehog but I still thought it was fair to give a nod to the character that helped me to be tolerant of hedgehogs.

But Sonic wasn’t the only video game character that I encountered. I also downloaded other hedgehog-themed video games for my iPod Touch and iPad including the following:

Crazy Hedgy.

Rollerhog

Spikes

Ironically I recently found out that there was a video game that was made for the PC years ago called Spike the Hedgehog. I had never heard of that video game before and I only named my pet Spike because he never hesitated to put his spikes up every chance he got. Given that one negative review I saw on Amazon.com, I think there’s a reason why this particular game is obscure.

I also remember reading about a hedgehog in literature. Who can ever forget that bizarre croquet game in Alice in Wonderland where the players used a flamingo as a mallet and a hedgehog as a ball?

I later learned that Beatrix Potter, who’s best known for the books Peter Rabbit and The Tale of the Squirrel Nutkin, wrote and illustrated a book called The Tale of Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle whose main character is a matronly looking hedgehog who did the laundry.

There were plenty of hedgehog toys, figurines, and a vairety of miscellaneous products that I could’ve collected if I wanted to (but I mostly didn’t due to limited space in my home).

Ty Beanie Ballz Prickles

The Calico Critters Pickleweeds Hedgehog Family

A forest-themed water bottle that includes a hedgehog.

A pair of Kikkerland Hedgehog Dryer Balls.

Some hedgehog plushies I found at Otakon 2012 that was held in Baltimore.

Hedgehog-shaped Christmas ornaments.

Westland Adora Bears Hedgehugs

A plush hedgehog puppet on sale at the 2012 Faerie Con in Hunt Valley, Maryland.

Inner Creatures’ Spikey anthro hedgehog ball-jointed doll.

Aurora’s Herzog the Hedgehog.

A handcrafted Sonic the Hedgehog quilt on sale at Awesome Con 2013 in Washington, DC.

Craft Play wooden hedgehog kit.

Ganley the Birthday Hedgehog.

Special edition Sonic the Hedgehog statues sold at Katsucon 2013 in National Harbor, Maryland.

Special Sonic the Hedgehog edition of the board game Monopoly sold at Katsucon 2013 in National Harbor, Maryland.

Hedgehog print on sale at Katsucon 2013 in National Harbor, Maryland.

A t-shirt that reads "Hedgehogs: Why Don’t They Just Share the Hedge?" that I bought for myself at Katsucon 2013 in National Harbor, Maryland.

A hedgehog birthday card.

A Scentsy Buddy Havi the Hedgehog that was on sale at the 2013 Hon Fest in Baltimore.

eeBoo’s Waste-Not hedgehog craft kit.

If the above products weren’t enough, there were a variety of hedgehog-shaped toys that I could’ve purchased for a dog or cat that were sold in the big-box retailers like PetSmart and Petco.

In Europe there is a hedgehog character named Mecki who is very popular there. Below is a 1952 German-language stop-motion animation featuring Mecki. (Unfortunately there are no English subtitles in the one clip I found online.)

Mecki’s popularity has led to a variety of spin-offs including postcards and stuffed animals.

Here in the United States there was one animated hedgehog character I was more familiar with. His name is Mr. Pricklepants and he was one of the minor characters in the Disney/Pixar film Toy Story 3.

Despite his small role in that film, I saw this one toy spin-off in one of the stores.

Earlier this year the Animal Planet cable channel broadcasted its annual Puppy Bowl (which is usually shown on the same day as the NFL Super Bowl) that features cute puppies playing with each other in a football field-like room along with the Bissell Kitty Halftime Show (featuring cute kittens swatting at various toys), hamsters broadcasting in the Puppy Bowl blimp, and a cockatiel named Meep the Bird who issued tweets on Twitter (get it?). At this year’s Puppy Bowl, Animal Planet featured hedgehog cheerleaders, who were incredibly cute. (I only wished I had known about the hedgehog cheerleaders sooner because I happened to live near the Discovery Channel building in Silver Spring where the Puppy Bowl is shot. I could’ve enter Spike in the tryouts.)

I saw people dressed in costume as hedgehogs. This one person cosplayed as Shadow the Hedgehog at Otakon 2012 in Baltimore.

Here’s a person dressed as Sonic the Hedgehog at Awesome Con 2013 in Washington, DC.

There was even a hedgehog who served as a mascot for a company called Spokeo who had gotten its share of controversy for its business practices. When I checked the URL for the first time in over a year last night, I saw that the cute blue hedgehog mascot had since been replaced by a typical bland corporate logo.

I’ve had my fun with using my smartphone or Internet searches to document all of the hedgehog-related products that are out there while I had Spike but now that my pet is deceased and I have no immediate plans to replace him with another hedgehog, I’m going to cut back on this activity. If I happened to see a really cute and memorable product I’ll snap a photo but, otherwise, I’m no longer going to go out of my way to take these pictures. As you can see in this blog, I already have more than enough hedgehog images to keep me amused so I don’t really see the need to continually take more pictures.

Sunday With Spike

Last Sunday was Superbowl Sunday and I really loved it this year, even though I’m normally not much of a football fan. As someone who grew up outside Baltimore, I was thrilled when the Baltimore Ravens made it to the Superbowl. I was so thrilled that I accepted an invitation to a party that someone from my separated/divorced persons support group held. The only downside is that minutes before the game started the party host had his Fios go out and he wasn’t able to get Verizon to send a repair person to his house on such a short notice so he brought out the radio to listen to a simulcast of the game. We hung around, socialized, ate food, and listened to the radio for a while until the start of the second half when we heard that someone on the Ravens made a spectacular play. At that point people wanted to actually see the game instead of listening to it so the party essentially broke up around 8:30 p.m. By the time I got home the infamous 30-minute blackout that struck the stadium in New Orleans (and temporarily halted the game) had ended and the game resumed. I was thrilled when the Baltimore Ravens won the Superbowl.

A few hours before the Superbowl, I decided to clean Spike’s cage in the afternoon even though he was still sleeping. (Hedgehogs are usually nocturnal.) I decided to watch the annual Puppy Bowl on Animal Planet while cleaning the cage. Each year I usually watch the Puppy Bowl because it is so cute. With a bunch of cute puppies in a pen resembling a football field playing rough (with each other and with various football-shaped balls) and a bunch of cute kittens performing in the halftime show, the Puppy Bowl is so hard to resist.

Last year the Puppy Bowl included a cockatiel named Meep the Bird who issued tweets on Twitter during the game (LOL!) and a blimp filled with hamsters. Meep and the hamsters returned this year along with another addition that had me almost squealing with delight! For the first time the Puppy Bowl had hedgehog cheerleaders. Hedgehog cheerleaders! Here are some screen shots of them in action.

The biggest irony is that I’m a hedgehog owner who lives close to the headquarters of Animal Planet’s parent company (Discovery Channel). If I had known about the addition of hedgehog cheerleaders to this year’s Puppy Bowl, I definitely would’ve gone there with Spike and auditioned him. (LOL!)

In the meantime, I decided to do something cute last week while I was cleaning Spike’s cage. Before I start, I usually move Spike from his cage to a green tub that’s lined with newspapers. I usually put in a mealworm or two for Spike to snack on while I go about the cleaning. That time I also added a surprise to Spike’s cage. I recently purchased this $5 stuffed hedgehog from one of the stores at Savage Mill and I put it in the tub to see how Spike would respond to a hedgehog-shaped stuffed animal that’s slightly smaller than him.

Initially Spike sniffed at the stuffed hedgehog.

But then I realized that Spike wasn’t impressed by the stuffed hedgehog at all. He ignored his stuffed doppelganger and decided to do what he usually does when he’s in the tub—bury himself under one of the newspaper layers so he would completely hide himself.

I Am Sick

Yesterday, not long after I uploaded two week’s worth of blog entries that should cover me while I’m out of town next week (I’ll write more on that later), this vicious stomach flu had hit me.

There were some signs yesterday morning when I had a brief bout of diarrhea but it cleared up for the time being. But then I felt extremely full the entire afternoon as if I had eaten a huge meal when I didn’t. As dinner rolled around, I tried to eat it even though I still felt extremely full but I only managed to eat one or two bites before the stomach flu showed up in a very big way.

Yesterday was Super Bowl Sunday but I only managed to watch Animal Planet’s annual Puppy Bowl before I felt so sick and tired that I had to go to bed early in the evening. I missed all of the regular Super Bowl and I didn’t even know who won until this morning. (For the record, the Green Bay Packers won.) I didn’t really care about the Packers or the Pittsburgh Steelers so it was no big deal to miss the football game. Heck, I’m not even that huge of a football fan. (I prefer baseball and soccer.)

I missed out of the unveiling of the new TV commercials but, from what I heard, the bulk of them sucked this year. The only real regret I had was missing out on the halftime show because it would’ve been cool to hear the Black-Eyed Peas. (I saw footage on MSNBC this morning of Christina Aguilera’s messing up the lyrics to the national anthem.)

What really sucked was that I purchased two bags of Baked Lay’s (in both regular and barbecue flavors) for my husband and I to eat during the Super Bowl and they pretty much went uneaten since I couldn’t stomach the idea eating potato chips (even if they were baked instead of the usual fried) and my husband didn’t touch them either.

Last night’s sleep wasn’t totally peaceful I kept on experiencing diarrhea, vomiting, and acid reflux throughout the night. My body also alternated between feeling very chilly and feeling very hot. My muscles ached so much that I’m now back to using a walking cane for the first time since I made a full recovery from a hip replacement in 2009. I’m also feeling very weak and tired so I won’t be doing much web surfing or anything else today. At least I put this blog on autopilot so it’ll just continue to upload entries that I have already created ahead of time for the next two weeks.