Birthday blessing: Miraculous appearing of a pet hedgehog

On my prayer list for August 2016 is listed a petition for a miraculous appearing of a pet hedgehog. It may have been a bit facetious, but God was listening.

About a month later, I was praying about something else and randomly opened my Bible. My eyes landed on Isaiah 14:23: “I will make it a possession of the hedgehog….” declares the Lord of hosts.” (ESV)

God was responding to my prayer for a pet hedgehog! Never mind that the context of the passage was about God bringing justice to those who had been mistreated by making their attacker’s land desolate and filled with hedgehogs, a desert creature. He was bringing His Word to life in response to my childlike prayer.

I started saving and researching hedgehog breeders. The only thing was, I really wanted a blonde girl hedgehog. I’d had a traditional salt-and-pepper (white with black bands) boy hedgehog as a child and wanted to mix it up. Blonde hedgehogs are not albinos; their quills are white with cinnamon and ginger colored banding due to a recessive gene, just like blonde-haired people.

I decided to sign up with a breeder that would put me on a waiting list for the next blonde girl born. I inquired with Otsego Hedgehogs in Minnesota a few days before my birthday in January 2017. I got on the waiting list a few days after my birthday. I knew it could be months since they couldn’t guarantee when another blonde girl would be born. Also, quill color and sex are not determined until the baby hedgehogs are a few weeks old.

But a couple weeks later the breeder sent me a text saying that it appears there were two blonde hedgehogs born in a litter of four January 29.

That was my birthday!

A week later, she let me know they were girls. I picked up my Ginger a few weeks later, a tiny prickly ball of a miracle.

Ginger on her first day home, March 2017.

The playful way that God answered my childlike prayer for a miraculous appearing of a pet hedgehog is something that reminds me that He is listening when I am waiting for answers to more difficult things.

He might not always answer our prayers in the way or the timing that we would like, but we can be sure He is listening and cares about us in a way that we can’t fully comprehend.

Sara Marie Moore is author and photographer of “The Spike Cream Woods,” a photo-illustrated children’s book featuring her pet hedgehog Ginger in a fanciful ice cream forest.

January 26, 2019 1

Good grief: Face your hedgehog’s death with tears

I came home from a camping trip in middle school in the ‘90s to my mother in tears – Hokey Pokey died while I was away.

My mother was rather beside herself having watched him slowly die while not knowing what to do for him. It was the ‘90s and we were just getting the internet. We didn’t know of blogs and websites about hedgehog care. There was nothing to Google. Exotic vets that see hedgehogs were few and far between.

I, being the strong, independent, grown up middle schooler I was, hardly shed a tear. But for almost 20 years I have kept a few of his quills tucked away in my desk. A photo of him in a hedgehog frame has been solidified, like a painting that cannot be erased.

I also somehow felt I was to blame for Hokey Pokey’s death and that kept me from properly grieving. As I became a middle schooler, I remembered I had been spending less time with my pokey friend as my attention shifted to teenage girl things. Hokey Pokey was my childhood dream and I was growing into new interests. I felt I must not have been taking good enough care of him and that is why he got sick.

It was only years later I realized that Hokey Pokey was about four years old when he died and that is the expected life span of domesticated hedgehogs.

The short life span of hedgehogs, plus the fact that they are susceptible to difficult diseases such as cancer and wobbly hedgehog syndrome, can cause much grief to the hedgehog community.

As I peruse across Instagram adoring cute hedgehogs, I invariably come across a RIP account or a current friend who recently lost a beloved spiky pal.

In these moments, I think about my new, dear hedgehog Ginger and how quickly she may pass.

Ginger brought healing to my heart after nearly 20 years of silently blaming myself for Hokey Pokey’s death. It was through becoming part of the ‘2010s hedgehog community that I realized a hedgehog owner cannot prevent their hedgehog from dying when it is their time to go, but they have the privilege to give them a loving life for three to four years.

In death and in life, the power of love is what reminds us there is still hope. If you loved a hedgehog, cry. If you love a hedgehog, cry. For, we cannot prevent their deaths and make them live for more years than they have been given. We can prolong their days, but we cannot prolong their lives. How I wish hedgehogs lived longer than four years.

20170803_105049 — I have kept some of Hokey Pokey’s quills for nearly 20 years.

Crying is a gift God has given us to face the grief that is part of this broken world. Someday, there will be no more crying or pain, and no more dying hedgehogs. Just cute, healthy ones scurrying about forever beneath the fruit trees next to the river of life that flows from God’s throne in the new heaven and new earth.

Grieving your hedgehog’s death is healthy. Grief is good in that it helps you face the reality of your love and loss. Others may not understand how you could be so distraught over a small creature, but please, cry. It will bring healing to your soul.

If your hedgehog has died, consider taking another one into your life when you are ready. Ginger certainly was a gift from God to me to remind me how new life can comfort and heal what has been lost, even years later.

Not long after I got married, I began longing for a hedgehog. I started buying all sorts of hedgehog decorations: salt and pepper shakers, mugs, linens, Christmas ornaments, etc. etc.

I was remembering with happiness my childhood hedgehog days but unsure whether the investment of time and money was worth having another hedgehog. But I was finally ready to face my lost longing with new life. I started praying for a blonde girl. I contacted a breeder.

Ginger was born on my birthday.

Sara Marie Moore is a journalist and happy hedgehog owner. She had her first hedgehog in fourth grade long before the current hedgehog craze.

August 3, 2017 0

When God made hedgehogs

It was the sixth day of creation.

It must have been late in the day, toward dusk, when God made his most unique creatures. His creative juices were flowing. Elephants, armadillos, platypus, manatees. The unique nocturnal creatures must have been the very last.

Perhaps a rat or a mouse ran by, followed by a porcupine.

“Ah-ha,” God must have said to Himself. “The last creature I make on earth before the human shall be like a combination of a unicorn and a mouse … except I didn’t quite get to the unicorn. A multi-corn mouse shall do.” And poof it was.

The hard-to-place creature was named after other familiar living things when it was presented to Adam for official naming. The multi-corn mouse poked out only its snout from a hedge when Adam saw it.

It was Eve who later fully discovered the hedgehog after Adam had gone to bed. It curled up in her lap while she was star gazing near a strawberry patch. “Well, hello there, little hedgehog … oh, my what bristly fur you have,” she noted. Eve enjoyed petting the textured, curled up creature as the moon rose.

The hedgehog suddenly scuttled back into the strawberry patch when it heard a twig crack. In Eve’s hand was left a quill, a small spine banded in brown and white.

She dipped it in a bit of strawberry juice and became the first human to write.

C-U-T-E, she etched on a leaf.

Sara Marie Moore is a journalist and happy hedgehog owner. She had her first hedgehog in fourth grade long before the current hedgehog craze.

June 3, 2017 0