Murray

Murray was our first hedgehog and (so to speak) the "guinea pig" for our early hedgehog care. It amazes me to realize how much more I know about hedgehogs now than I did when we first brought tiny Murray home from a pet store in June 1997!

Yes, she was a girl. Our ignorance extended to determining gender, so we named her after the dog on the sitcom Mad About You. Even after we found out we had been wrong, the name seemed appropriate for our loving, headstrong, occasionally grumpy girl.

Outdoors

Murray loved to play in the grass of the nearby Methodist Church. She liked to visit my parents in Huntsville, Alabama and was incredibly happy to spend a while playing in the tall clover in their front yard. The grass -- taller than she was -- provided an interesting place for her to burrow and explore and the great outdoors smelled a great deal more interesting than our apartment to her.

The church also has wonderful gritty granite stairs which allowed her to climb as well as wear down her nails. We were very thankful for this extra bonus, since hedgehog nails are incredibly hard to trim! Of course, a disclaimer: any hedgehog taken outdoors, or allowed indoor play time, must be extremely well-supervised. They can get away from you quickly. I can't stress this enough. Hedgehogs are nocturnal, burrowing animals by nature and have a strong inclination to get themselves into small, dark spaces. Any indoor space should be hedgehog-proofed to the best of your ability.

Murray also enjoyed the wide-open spaces of Charleston's lovely Waterfront Park. She posed here with a piece of non-descript wood, which she was quite content to climb upon. And as always, my husband and I stood nearby, keeping two sets of watchful eyes on her every move. Since Waterfront Park attracts a lot of tourists and people walking their dogs, Murray received a lot of attention from people who have never seen a hedgehog before. She didn't seem to mind.

Indoor Playtime

Hedgehogs need to be supervised while outside their habitat. At some point, we would have loved to give Murray her own "room," but barring that, she played in her spacious pet corral or around the apartment, usually in the early evening under someone's watchful eye. We lined her pet corral with vellux blankets, which we purchased as seconds and cut into pieces that fit perfectly. They get thrown in the wash every couple of days and voila! clean corral.

She had a wheel in her corral, which she loves to use when it's dark and quiet, but has been more and more comfortable during the daylight hours. She was usually awake and running when on her wheel, but she did take a little catnap occasionally!

She also enjoyed playing with toilet paper tubes, which seems to be almost a universal trait among hedgehogs. There have been warnings that some hedgehogs can get their heads caught in the tubes, but Murray didn't have that problem. I made a couple of tubes out of craft foam for her, since they look a little nicer and are soft, in case she bonked into a wall. She became very attached to the new tubes!

Murray slept in a pillowcase or a custom-made critter cozy. She was very attached to her new cozy and was occasionally reluctant to emerge, as the photo at right shows. She would occasionally drag her pillowcase or bag over to her food dish so she didn't even have to get out of "bed" while eating (as evidenced by photo at left). When allowing a hedgehog to sleep in a fabric bag of any kind, you have to be careful to watch for loose strings which could become wrapped around tiny feet or legs.

Bath Time

Murray took baths only under duress. She took a brief shower in warm water in the sink and then was nicely lathered with Johnson & Johnson's lovely smelling lavender baby wash. If she was especially dirty, we gently brushed her lathered quills with a soft toothbrush set aside for just that purpose. We made sure to thoroughly rinse her and then dried her in towels before letting her go back to her pet corral.

We generally avoided bathing her when it is cool outside but when absolutely necessary, we dried her with a hairdryer on a low setting. She would occasionally freeze and close her eyes ... we think she enjoyed it.

At one point, we decided to give Murray a more interesting bath experience. After giving her the typical bath, we filled the sink with a couple of inches of warm water and put her back down in it. Hedgehogs are very good swimmers, but Murray had never had the opportunity to try it out. Since this was the first time she had dealt with this much water, we didn't give her enough depth to actually swim.

She wandered around in the sink with (as you can see) enough water to come up to her chin. She didn't seem to be bothered by it much and tried only once to climb out of the sink. We considered this a good sign since she always tried to escape from the sink during regular baths.

In Memoriam

In October, 1999, Murray was diagnosed with squamous cell carcinoma, a type of skin cancer, along her jawline. She remained healthy and amazingly happy for six months before rapidly losing weight and slipping away quietly on April 19, 2001.

If you want to learn more about cancer in hedgehogs, please visit the Cancer in Hedgehogs section at Hedgies.com to read Murray's case study and discover other resources, including journal-style entries that I wrote to one of the hedgehog email lists.