Pictures of the orphaned baby hedgehogs! I am pleased to say they are doing well and gaining weight. They aren't as fat and happy as they would be with mommy, but we're doing the best we can as mere non-prickly hoomans.
Well...hubby is kinda prickly....
I would like you to know that my husband allowed me to take these pictures at great sacrifice. It was MY turn to do the feedings, but I couldn't take pictures AND feed, so he took my shift, allowing me to get these shots. What a trooper!
Then again I take all the night shifts and top them off before I leave for work in the morning...so he can bite me. :)
And please pardon the coloring in some of the shots. My husband's tshirt was yellow, the blankies we wrapped them in were yellow, the kitchen was cream and yellow...it confused the poor camera. I think you can get the idea tho.
Without further ado...first baby getting fed...
Pardon hubby's mouth. *sigh*
This one is the messiest eater. :)
Baby number two's turn!
Eating from a dropper is hard, messy work!
Last but not least....Baby Three!
You have to fall in love with that face...you just have to!
Here's a pic of all three of them in hubby's hands, just to give you an idea of how tiny they are.
And here's a movie of them all jostling around, looking for the best spot to snooze. :)
But here's the most exciting part...later we caught them EATING SOLID FOOD! Yay!
We will keep giving them the formula until they are 6 weeks old, but any extra mouthful they get helps them that much more. Yay!
And there they are! :) Keep your fingers crossed for us!
So we stop by Aldi's on the way home from work because I need to restock on ice cream drum sticks...you know, the kind with fudge in the middle? Oh, yeah.....
/drool mode
So we stop by Aldi's, and they have the shopping carts you have to rent for a quarter. If you are kind enough to return the cart to the corral after shopping, you get your quarter back. Lo and behold, we get a cart with a quarter still in it! The last person hadn't taken it out of the coin slot. How nice for us! We get to shop free today! Drumsticks, breakfast sandwiches, and cheap strawberries...you are MINE!
When it's time to leave my husband asks if we should pocket the quarter, or pay it forward.
Me: Oh, pay it forward! We thought it was a nice thing to happen to us, so let's let someone else have the same experience.
Hubby: I agree!
Me: And if the next person decides to keep the quarter....MAY THEY BURN IN HELL!!
Hubby: What if it's a sweet little old lady who really needs the quarter?
Me: Then the quarter should be worth BURNING IN HELL for!
Moral of the story: I think my job is getting to me. :)
I could have possibly been stressed because I was up very late last night. Sadly, we found a momma hedgie had died, and left three little three week old babies behind. This is the first time we've ever had this happen. We've had mommies reject the babies, and fostered them to other moms or, on one memorable occasion when we didn't have another mom, to a lactating rat.
Note...the rat became a beloved member of our household. She was never named, but known for the rest of her life as momma rat. She use to love sitting on the pig's nose. Ah, the mind of a rat. :)
Anyways, I had to take these little babies away from their poor dead mommy, and I had no idea what to do with them. We ended up just giving them warm water to keep them hydrated until a store that sold kitten formula opened. Then I got to go to work while my hubby got to stay home and mix, warm, feed, and clean up kitten formula every two hours. So far the babies seem to be doing well, but we aren't! If a baby hedgie doesn't want to be fed it just curls up in a tight little ball, and all you can do is wait him/her out. They are sweet, tho, and very pretty colors. We'll hang in there and do our best with them.
How am I going to let these guys go after hand feeding them? I'll be too attached! Must not think that far ahead....must not think that far ahead....
On a happier note, I finally got a chance to make something that had been bouncing around in my head. Then he stared at me all night. Introducing...CRAZY LEGS FROG!!
Is that little guy nuts, or WHAT? :) So far he's one of a kind, but I do plan on making more, as well as other types. Crazy legs clown? Crazy legs kitten? I have no idea...I'd love suggestions. :)
He already sold, but his brothers, sisters, and cousing will be showing up soon at LaurelsZoo on Etsy...keep an eye out!
I'll try to post baby hedgie pics soon...when I get a break between feedings!
We're not talking about a window unit here. We're talking about a full blown central air conditioning unit installed on the outside of the house. Still, William is 120lbs of full blown geriatric pig here. He should have been able to take it head on. Or at least not crawl under it and get stuck. Come on, William! Pigs are suppose to be smart!
It was a beautiful sunny day, which may be one reason he crawled under it. William is a pink pig, and pink pigs in the sun are like metal in the microwave: Lots of sparks and screaming. But we have trees. We have bushes. Why did you pick the shade under the air conditioning unit?
Did you choose it because there was lovely, cool dirt underneath it? Well...fooled you! That was not lovely dirt! That is where we dump the ashes from the BBQ pit to keep weeds down! Ha ha!
What bothers me the most, tho, is how my husband handled the situation. He heard the pig screaming, ran outside to see what was going on, and quickly assessed the situation as 'pig stuck under air condioner." What did he do then? He grabbed one of his legs and pulled him out.
No no NO!! How could he do that to me? You run inside, grab the video camera, and get at least 30 seconds of it BEFORE you pull him out! Have I taught you nothing in all those years of living with me? Don't give me that 'he was upset' speech. He's healthy, his heart can take 30 seconds of video!
Remember when William was a baby and got his head stuck in a popcorn bag? Remember how our youngest daughter ran and got her video camera before she saved him? I raised that child right. Remember when our youngest son fell asleep on the beach and woke up to find his sister had not only buried him, but given him ginormous boobs? Remember how he held still for pictures before leaping up to kill her? I raised that boy right. Those are movies and pictures I will treasure forever. But will I be able to treasure a video of Willy stuck under the air conditioner? No.
I've been robbed.
Okay, so Willy is a bit traumatized. He FINALLY went back outside, but refused to step off the ramp, much less go into the yard. I've tried to explain to him that the air conditioner is firmly attached to the house, but he ain't buying it. If he sets foot on grass it might get him again. This means Willy has not pottied in almost 24 hours. And since no outside means no food, he also didn't eat for almost 24 hours.
I did finally feed him. He kept following me around the house making noises like a clarinet with a broken reed, promising not to poo on the floor if I would just please feed him. I'm a sucker, I fell for it. It was just so heart wrenching, sitting there in the bathroom while he shot piteous pig squeaks under the bathroom door.
Yes, he can shoot pig squeaks under doors. He has to get on his knees so he can cram his nose right up against the bottom of the door, but he does it well. It's very amusing to watch from both sides.
Anyways...where was I? Oh yes! Ticked at husband!
Ah well, whatcha gonna do? The moment has passed. All we have to remind us of the event is a traumatized piggy, who is a deep shade of ash on one side. At least until we get him outside and give him a bath.
Well, the standard and cinnamon baby hedgies are gone, and I have no doubt that the little pinto baby will leave us soon...but here sits Rosie. Poor girl!
Perhaps if you hadn't bitten the guy who came to see you. He knew he was coming to see you, and he knew you were a big girl and have been on a DIET! The nerve of him holding you in hands that smelled like taco bell! I'da bitten him too! Twice! Hard!
Moral of the story: If you stop to eat before you visit a hedgie, especially one on a diet, WASH YOUR HANDS!
You should probably wash your hands anyway, but we won't go there...
Please pity Rosie, who has yet to find a forever home:
And if you would like to take a peek at the little pinto baby we still have, you can see her here.
Completely changing the subject...(Ha! You were wondering how heavy hedgies and commuting were related! Now you know: THEY'RE NOT!)...my hours, which tend to be 9-6, were changed yesterday to 8-5. Since my charming hubby has been driving me to work I got to listen to 20 minutes of 'why did they change your hours? It's so early! Oh God, I don't think my heart has started beating yet!' that led me to believe he fully and completely understood my hours were 8-5, not 9-6.
5pm rolls around, no ride. I have one of those jobs that makes me hot and desperate to go home, so I texted 'where r u?' and recieved the response "ha ha, forgot your hours changed. I'm at home."
Since he had actually phoned in his reply I had to count to 10 before responding "get in the car and start driving." He sounded a bit taken aback, puzzled as to why I would want him to drop what he was doing and move NOW! He did, tho, and apologized, which means he realized on the way there his life might be in danger.
I bought several pairs of new earrings, and said if it happened again I was buying a new watch. Just to make sure, tho, we made a deal that today he would pick me up at 5pm, or not at all. That way maybe, just maybe, by the time I was finished walking home, I'd be too tired to kill him. Probably not, but he'd at least have a running chance. Some people thought this was harsh. All people not sharing a vehicle, I'm sure. The point is moot, tho, for he picked me up on time. Bravo!
Tomorrow my hours change back to 9-6. I have no freaking idea when I'll get home. :)
Not feeling up to writing, but feeling like a blog should be occasionally updated, I have decided to copy here something I wrote years ago. It was originally written as a forum post, but then published in the NAPPA News. I was told I could reprint it as long as I mentioned 'originally published in Nappa News'...and I have. :) Their website is here, please check it out, and please please PLEASE make sure you thoroughly research any pet before you bring it into your home.
That said...I must add that we got our pot belly AFTER this happened. No learning curve. :)
NAPPA NEWS
From the Internet: Multi-species Experience by Laura Cronin
A while back Carol posted a message in sec0 about a multi-species section, a section for households with several (well, at least two) different animal species residing in love and harmony. I would like to make some comments about such a section.
We are babysitting Cilly the Pig this weekend. Cilly hates me, but we have managed to come to an understanding over time: If she bites me I will get even, if she doesn’t bite me I will feed her and scratch her ears. This has worked well for us with the exception of an occasional run-in in the hallway, when I wish to pass and she feels I really don’t need to. The fact that Murphy the dog is incredibly jealous of the pig, and Zackery the bird is scared to death of the pig, was merely amusing, and in no way affected our relationship.
Until tonight.
Cilly spent an exciting afternoon out on our dog run. She likes it out there. There are always hazelnuts lying about the back of the yard, she can eat whatever is hanging over the edge of the asparagus bed, and the neighbors sneak her bananas. So we weren’t surprised that she complained loudly and refused to come when it was time to bring her in. Once inside, however, we realized that a lot of the complaining was because she had managed to get her harness twisted, and one of her front legs pushed through the neck hole.
Now the fun part: Getting a twisted harness off an angry pig. The one good thing about this was she was so twisted up in the harness she couldn’t charge us, and we could easily outrun her. The bad thing about this was if we could touch the harness she could also chew off whatever we were touching the harness with. Larry tried reasoning with Cilly, but it just didn’t work. Cilly called him several foul names and tried to bite him. The children, frankly, scattered…. once in a while one would run screaming thorough the room, but they were not going to be any help. I decided to just grab the harness and pull as hard as I could, hoping for the best.
Did you know that if you get a pig really, really angry it will follow you onto the couch, and you will be forced to swing from the hanging plant until someone else can distract her? Sure, I could have gone left to the top of the bookshelf and avoided the plant…next time I will. I just didn’t have time to think it out.
You only have a partial picture now. Laura is alternating between swinging from the hanging plant and trying to get a grip on the harness. Larry is alternating between trying to reason with Cilly (Will you be good so I can take that mean harness off?) and making sure Laura is kept fully abreast of the situation (Hey, you’re gonna hurt yourself swinging from the plant like that!) while dodging pig teeth. There is also an occasional child running screaming through the room, not necessarily one of mine. If you want the full picture you must add a few things:
1. Murphy is a great dog. He loves us, and would do almost anything to protect us. Almost anything but growl and/or bite. He prefers to put himself between the danger and us. That failing, he prefers to knock us out of the way of danger. This means that seconds before we were hit with 100lbs of black pig, we got hit with 85lbs of golden dog instead. Erin tried to restrain Murphy, but she’s small. Murphy found that her weight hanging off his collar was a wee bit detrimental, but he was easily able to compensate.
2. Zackery hates Cilly with a passion, and runs screaming every time he sees her to what he feels is a place of safety. Unfortunately he considers me to be one of the safest places around. This means that every time I managed to get my head up I was getting hit in the face with a panicky green bird. Every time I tried putting Zack in another room I was intercepted by Cilly, and ended up back on the plant.
3. Children are very resilient little creatures. They soon figured out they were in no danger, the pig was only attacking the adults. They decided to amuse themselves by flying paper airplanes down the hall. These were very GOOD paper airplanes. Most of them managed to make it all the way down the hall and into the living room, where they would hit either Larry or Laura on the back of the head. We found out later this meant an extra 10 points to the thrower.
All in all it was one of the most exciting Saturday nights I’ve had in years. We finally called pigly people for advice (Thank you Marilyn and Carol!) and bribed Cilly to not bite us with an entire box of grapenuts dumped onto the floor. Our first attempt at bribery was carrots, but we discovered Cilly either hates them, or was too angry at us to care about food. I even stuffed one right in her mouth, and she spit it back at me! (Pah-TUI!) You know a pig is mad when they turn down food!
Well, the harness finally came off, Cilly enjoyed her grapenuts, and Murphy got TWO treats for protecting all of us. Zack still has a death grip on the back of my head, but we’re pretty sure he’ll calm down shortly. Andy the rabbit is cheerfully pulling off long strips of wallpaper and eating them, and we found a new litter of baby guinea pigs. Brandon won the paper airplane contest hands down, and Erin was finally able to go to the bathroom. (Note to self: next time you dump grapenuts all over the floor, do NOT do it in Erin’s bedroom doorway, effectively trapping her in there until Cilly is positive every single grapenut has been eaten.)
I don’t think we should have a section for multi-species households. Nobody would believe the stories.
Laura
PS – I just went back and checked. Cilly ate the carrot.
'A Man and His Pig' by Laurel Cronin, copyright 2002
My life has been severely disrupted this week because I've been working overnights in the electronics department of...oh, let's just say a store whose name rhymes with GallMart. This work is done overnight to minimize disruption of customer service. Perhaps it's lack of sleep, but it brought up some issues with me....
If you go into a store at 3am because you suddenly decide you MUST have a CERTAIN game and you MUST have it now, but then discover the department is all torn apart and they can't find the game, please keep a couple of things in mind. 1...stores do need to stock sometime. Even a 24hour store. 2...calling ahead is a wonderful way of finding out if a store has the item you want. 3...it wasn't even a new release, bro! Come on!
I do sympathize a bit. You go in wanting something, and find out the department is ripped apart with a bunch of sleep deprived employees staggering about...none of whom seem to know (or care) what they're doing. And it's not like they are doing much! We didn't make a grand, new department. Stuff was just moved from here to there, as it is about every 6 months. Move it to a new spot and people think it's new stuff.
If you're asking a person to work overnight, tho, it should have a real purpose. I mean, having a person walk into a store and go past the dvd players....but today it's not dvd players! OMG...it's TELEPHONES! LET'S BUY ONE!! That is not a good reason to make a person work overnight. Emergency and Medical workers...God bless you for working overnights. If I do something stupid and almost kill myself at 3am, thank goodness you are there to try and keep me from dying. Avoidance of death is a good reason to ask a person to work overnights.
Donut Makers...I think a person who eats a donut that early in the morning is too tired to realize it's fresh. I bet you could get away with making them the night before. Really. Trash collectors...I can understand you not wanting to work in the heat of a sizzling summer day, but - weather permitting - I'd really appreciate it if you came later. You are noisy by nature, and I like to sleep in. Food service workers...I'm torn! While I think it's totally unfair to ask someone to get up that early to make food for people who don't want to get up and make it themselves, on mornings I have to get up early I sure do love buying breakfast and not having to make it myself. You should, at the very least, be paid well.
There were some people who said they preferred working nights, but I wrote that off to sleep deprivation. It did have its good points. Traffic was light. Um...that's all I can think of...except for the fact that sleep deprived people get very silly around 4am, and watching a grown man sit on the floor giggling while tossing peg hooks around makes you giggle yourself. And oh...the time a poor guy was left hanging at the top of a ladder because someone decided to move the bin he was working on...we laughed and laughed and laughed. Then we helped him down. Or he fell. Whatever. He's fine.
So what's the point of this blog, you ask? What? Blogs are suppose to have a point? Nobody told me this! I apologize. I will try harder next time. :)
/rantmode enter selfserve mode
I recently got a pair of earrings that I must really love, because when I dropped one between the sink and the wall in the bathroom I had my husband cut the wall out to get the earring back. I've received more compliments on these than just about any pair I've ever worn! Please check them out, as I would much rather promote someone else today. :)
And here's a movie of them all jostling around, looking for the best spot to snooze. :)
