The Red Light

We have our own red light district in my house, and it's in our bedroom. And if that doesn't sound sexy enough, I should mention that the red light is meant to warm up my wife's hedgehog. Her actual hedgehog. The hedgehog I bought her at the local pet store as a part of her 40th birthday. THAT hedgehog.

Shirra has always wanted to have a hedgehog. As long as we've been together, she's been into things British, and nothing epitomizes cute and British more than a hedgehog. Never mind that the one in our bedroom is an African hedgehog, or that he hides most of the time, or that you need gardening gloves to hold him, or that he smells like a lavatory, or that Brits also call them 'hedgepigs.' She loves her little hedgehog. She named him Ambrose.

Ambrose is about 10 weeks old and is very cute, even when he's balled up like a little pin cushion beneath the cardboard box in his cage. Hedgies are carnivores, which means that he'll get even cuter when he starts eating crickets in a few weeks (when he's old enough). He'll be cuter still if we can get him a mouse or other creature to chew on.

I got to hold him a few days ago. He uncoiled a bit but mainly stayed in his safe little spiky ball. Shortly after that, Shirra discovered that he opens up if you blow on his spikes. Fiona raved about this, since she'd held him, too. I'll have to don the gloves and give him another try.

As for the red light, Shirra decided that our house is maybe a bit too cool for this African fellow, so she bought a light that sits atop his cage, warming him up. So every night, we go to bed in a room with a red glow illuminating a quiet cage that's housing a shy hedgehog who's lying still beneath a cardboard box.