Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, December 19, 1994 TAG: 9412230043
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: ALMENA HUGHES STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Early this year, Garrett Justice hedged his premonition that live hedgehogs will soon be the new potbellied pigs of petdom. He bought a few. Recently, to show a reporter how adorable they can be, Justice picked up one of the quilled critters that he keeps in his Christiansburg townhouse. But first, he put on his thick leather gloves.
"They're very tame," Justice explained. "But when they're startled, like when you first touch them, or if they're frightened, they ball up and prick up their quills. That's their defense."
Sticker, abruptly wakened from a sound mid-day sleep, breathed in sounding like a miniature hydraulic pump and puffed up her quills. Justice gently held her, speaking softly, stroking her quills, and after a few moments, the nocturnal creature blinked dazedly at the offending daylight, excreted a few compact brown poops and relaxed.
"Once they get used to you - your voice and smell - they're OK," Justice said, removing his gloves.
Justice, a landscaper, part-time deejay and country-western dance exhibitor, said he's had every legal pet possible, starting with baby ducks when he was 5 years old. The prospect of raising hedgehogs fascinated him. But the male and three females he bought came with less than two pages of information to explain their care, feeding and origins.
When he couldn't find much else written on the subject, Justice was inspired to compile his own data based on his observations of when and what hedgehogs eat; when and where they sleep; how they react to different environments and situations; when they breed and bear offspring. He hopes to turn his notes into a children's book, a care-and-maintenance book and maybe a nature-study type TV special.
"I get more calls from people who are curious about them than from people who want to buy them," Justice said. There's much about the creatures that people don't know or that's incorrect.
For example, hedgehogs are not rodents. They don't gnaw, bite, scratch or claw. They have hard-to-describe masked ferret/possum/raccoon faces and short hamster-like tails. Bodily, they resemble and are in the same family as porcupines. But unlike their larger, more aggressive cousins, hedgehogs are usually mild-mannered, although males may become combative when around females.
They don't shoot quills, and in fact, when they're relaxed they are pleasantly soft when stroked from head to tail. Aside from their hydraulic-pump imitation, Justice said the only other sound he's heard them make was when "the male was squeaking like a mouse and crawling around on his belly for maybe 30 minutes before mating."
If you have on lotion or cologne, they like to lick it and apply the scent to themselves. They sometimes do the same thing with chewed pine shavings or other foreign or funky scents.
"They have really long tongues, and they stretch out flat and do this contortion. I don't know why," Justice said about the quirk. "Maybe it's defense or maybe they're lubricating their skin."
To the naked eye, Justice's African Painted Pygmy Hedgehogs, the smallest of the species, appear black and white, but are actually those colors plus brown and yellow. They contentedly live in see-through plastic blanket boxes among piles of aspen or pine shavings, which Justice changes every couple of days.
They're generally odor-free and don't need bathing; clean, although they can catch mites if exposed to them. They must be kept at temperatures 60 degrees or warmer. Justice says they can be litter-box trained.
They'll live for about nine years, reaching a maximum weight of about two pounds. They drink from hanging water bottles and mostly eat dry cat food and occasionally mealy worms. They'll wake up even during the daytime to eat canned corn ... or to have babies.
"Human babies tend to be born in the middle of the night, which is the opposite of when we're usually up and moving around," Justice said. "I guess since hedgehogs are nocturnal, daytime is their nighttime."
Based upon the way Miss Piggy had fattened up during the past 35 days - the average gestation period - and lately been creating a roomy nest, Justice expected that she would soon be giving birth to a litter of "hoglets." Hedgehogs can bear up to four litters of four to six babies each per year, he said, although he doesn't plan to breed his that rapidly. The babies are born with soft white hair that within 24 hours hardens into little quills. By age 3 weeks, they look and act just like miniature adults.
"Hogatha's not pregnant," Justice said, holding up the largest of his hedgehogs and explaining that the females usually outsize the males. "She just eats a lot."
Unperturbed, Hogatha burrowed in search of peace, warmth, darkness and sleep under the pile of presents beneath the Christmas tree where Justice had placed her for a photographer. Justice insisted that after sundown, she'd be a bundle of energy, waddling around on stubby legs barely visible beneath her quilled fringe, curiously sniffing out her surroundings.
He said that the prickly pets amuse his 11-year-old stepdaughter, who keeps her gloves on when playing with them, for hours on end. He thought they'd make great pets for young teen-agers, especially video Sonic fans, but said he wouldn't recommend them for young children.
Justice occasionally sells his hedgehogs for about $150-$175 through an advertisement in this newspaper and several trading papers.
A random check of pet stores found that while hedgehogs may be the coming thing, they are not easy to come by. Two stores' representatives said if they had any, hedgehogs would sell for about $120. Another store, which had three available, was selling them for $199. Two stores offered a 7-day warranty and suggested having the hedgehogs checked by a veterinarian within that period. One store's warranty was 24 hours. Justice offers no official warranty, but said he'd stand behind his pets. He can be reached at 381-0241.
by CNB