Today I want to tell you a sad story of a little lovely hedgehog killed by the cold.

Last Tuesday I was having breakfast with a friend of mine, when my husband, who had just exit to go work, came back in a hurry and told us about a little hedgehog feeling ill in the corner of our garden.

So we went out and looked at the little pet. He was trying to move but it was very slow, lied on the grass with closed eyes. He seemed in a pre-hibernating mode and he had a difficult mobility.

At the very first moment we thought he was dying and we supposed that leaving him there would be the right choice, but at the same time he was alive and in need of our help: we couldn’t leave him to his fate also because it was incredibly cold and windy. We decided to keep the little hedgehog and bring him home!

That day I had previously planned to visit Ely’s Cathedral with my friend and, as she had very few days to stay with me in Cambridge (she lives in France, indeed), we couldn’t change our plan. So, after a careful consideration, we decided to put the hedgehog in a box with a cloth and some lettuce and leave him in my bathroom, which is a quite warm room with any danger.

During the day, we made lots of supposition about the hedgehog’s fate and we were quite afraid to find him died the same evening. Also, we were sad.

We went home at about half past five in the afternoon and we found the little hedgehog alive: he was trying to move with many difficulties and he had not eaten the lettuce. We thought he should drink some water but first of all we decided to carry him to a veterinary, as he was clearly in need of care.

The veterinary’s secretary, who welcomed us, had a look to the animal, carried him to the doctor’s room and told us that the doctor would like to try helping him with some fluids and would like to take him over night under observation. She told us that the day after someone would have called me on the phone to update me about the hedgehog’s situation.

We went home hopeful and we pass the evening thinking about the possibility to take care of the little animal during the winter, maybe keeping him in my house for all the time and aiming to put him in nature during the following spring.

But, as I told you at the very beginning of this article, this is a sad story.

The following morning we didn’t receive any phone call and we wait, hoping the doctor would do his best. I thought about the possibility that he should keep the hedgehog under observation for more time, but my husband and our friend were quite pessimistic.

In the evening, we went to the veterinary’s office and the secretary told us that, unfortunately, the little hedgehog had died. Killed by the cold of the previous days, probably while he was trying to build his nest.

And this is true: there is a high level of mortality, between hedgehogs, exactly in the pre-hibernating period as this is a very tricky phase of hedgehog’s life.

Sometimes, things do not go as you would...