Mickey the Hedgehog

After writing a bit about animals, I have decided to share a story. One evening in July, I went out to the bins where I came across something on the floor. I wasn’t sure what it was, but when I got closer, it started moving. It turned out to be a dehydrated hedgehog. I told my family and they came out to look.

We grabbed some water, food and oven gloves. We put on the gloves and picked him up. He was quite weighty, and when he curled up, a tiny hole was left. Since we knew that his face was in there. We put a pellet of hedgehog food in the hole and we heard sniffing. After that we heard crunching, and then it stopped. So we put more in. And the same thing happened again. Shortly after, we had obviously gained his trust and he uncurled. His eyes looked very dehydrated so we put the water in front of him. He drank for almost two minutes. We saw some ticks on his face, so we called a Wildlife Trust and we got in the car. The Wildlife Rescue kept him because of the ongoing extreme heatwave and drought.

Fast forward to the 9th of September, we got a text from the Wildlife Trust and we arranged to pick up the hedgehog, who we had named Micky. When we arrived to pick Micky up, nobody was there to help as they had gone to help a badger. Luckily a volunteer was still there, saw us and let us in. He led us into the room where the hedgehogs were kept, and we looked for Micky everywhere. We eventually found him lying in his box while watching us. We put him in a box and then the car, putting the seatbelt round the box, and we drove home. At dusk we cut a door into the box and put it outside. The following morning he had gone.

By Noah G, Microzoo Designer