I won’t ridicule U.K. ‘hedgehog’ rescuer
In a world overflowing with cruelty, this British woman’s instincts were pure kindness
It’s a case of mistaken identity in the headwear aisle.
Or more accurately, on a street in the U.K. I don’t even care if this turns out to be fake news, a talker stage-managed by a slick PR agency. It’s too heartwarming.
This month, a British woman was traipsing along the cobblestone when she came upon a baby hedgehog. But something was wrong. It was not moving. It was not breathing. It was cold to the touch. (Personally, I would have also wondered why it did not have legs or a face, but what do I know about the hoglets of Cheshire?)
According to reports, the woman gently scooped up the baby hedgehog and returned to her flat. She placed what she believed to be a sick critter in a cardboard box lined with newspaper. She gave it cat food. She put it in a warm place to recuperate. She followed all the rules.
But in the morning, the woman was alarmed when the baby hedgehog had not eaten a bite or moved an inch. So she put a lid on the box and went to the Lower Moss Wood Nature Reserve and Wildlife Hospital.
As the first patient of the day, the baby hedgehog was rushed into triage where medics encountered a snafu not covered in veterinary school: How do you revive a pompom?
Janet Kotze, the hospital manager, was quoted in the Mirror. In her opinion, this baby hedgehog was actually the “bobble from the top of a woolly hat.”
“I opened the box and, well, I couldn’t quite believe what I was seeing,” Kotze said. “I thought, ‘It’s definitely not a hedgehog, perhaps it’s some other kind of fluffy creature.’ I realized it wasn’t animated at all and I picked it up and obviously with the weight I could feel that it wasn’t a hedgehog or any animal at all.”
It’s interesting how our eyes can deceive us. I was once walking along a country road in Pennsylvania at night and stopped in my tracks after spotting a skunk. It was an empty bag of chips blowing in the wind. That’s where that story ends. It’s not as if I scooped up that Frito-Lay bag and tried to feed it a grasshopper.
Did you ever read an odd tale out of Poland in 2021? A Krakow woman called emergency services to report a menacing creature lurking in nearby branches. She believed it posed a grave threat to locals. Authorities were dispatched. The “tree beast” was a croissant.
I have no clue how a rather large and fully intact puff pastry got wedged in a treetop. But when I saw the photo, I sympathized with that woman who thought it might be a hostile alien creature. Our brains are not hard-wired to associate birch with baked goods.
Mark my words: the Loch Ness Monster will turn out to be an experimental bagpipe.
This is also why I refuse to ridicule the altruistic British woman who this month nurtured a hat accessory. When I saw the image the BBC posted on X, it did kind of look like a baby hedgehog. The wild saltand-pepper locks also reminded me of a late uncle.
Here’s the thing: all of this only becomes a problem when our eyes repeatedly deceive us and our other senses don’t flash stop signs. If there are stories next month about how this same woman rescued a starfish down by the marina and then was informed her aquarium is now home to an old mitten then, yes, an intervention is in order before she is jabbing an IV into a traumatized chipmunk that is actually a child’s slipper.
After being informed the baby hedgehog was a toque topper, the woman was reportedly mortified. She beat a hasty retreat from the animal hospital with her boxed pom-pom, which is possibly now sitting on a shelf and named Harry.
But this Good Samaritan and unlikely future CEO of PetSmart should not be embarrassed. She should be proud.
In a world overflowing with cruelty, her instincts were pure kindness. In a frantic age of bystander apathy, she spotted a fluff ball and worried it was a living creature in need of help. Believing a fellow mammal was down and out, she stepped up.
Most people would have hurried past that pom-pom without a second thought — even if it really was a baby hedgehog in distress. Not this zoological Florence Nightingale. Am I tempted to mail her a balledup sock with googly eyes just to see what happens? Yes. But I salute her for taking that pom-pom home to nurse it back to health as her cat looked on in disbelief.
Animal lovers are the greatest humans on this planet. While this woman may consider visiting an optometrist, she has no need for a cardiologist.
Her eyes deceived her. Her heart did not.