I have the same fears Simbo – what I’d do, is I’d do the research, with the help from the hedgehog rescue centre, and find out what you could catch from a hedgehog – the rescue centre said to me anything we can catch is treatable – and if you get infected by a prick from their spines, you can treat it with canistan.
But I’d tell them they have internal parasites, and lungworm and stuff – so they hopefully would be more reluctant to pick them up and try cuddle them and stuff – I’d also tell them that the mother sometimes eats her babies if the nest gets disturbed.
Most kids really like animals, but clumsy with them, they want to pick them up all the time, then there is the physco kids, few and far between, but every school has them. If I tell them they could potentially catch something from a hedgehog (reluctant to say it’s treatable though LOL), they might be less likely.
Hi Penny,
I don’t know why the hogs got stolen, but I assume, before they closed they might have been quite a good rescue centre, but it sounds, from their facebook posts in 2018 that the owner couldn’t move in her house as there were boxes of hedgehogs all over the place.
When I volunteered at an animal shelter (2 pigs, 7 sheep, a horse, rabbits and guinea pigs, and cats), they said that sanctuarys and shelter start off with really good intentions, but they feel reluctant to say no, get too full and can’t manage anymore. Then some owners get older or unwell.
When that happens, everything goes down hill and the animals suffer incredibly – so when we get frustrated with these kind of places for saying no to us when they are full, there’s a valid reason – because they need to make sure they are able to deliver the care.
And I’m wondering if that’s what happened with them. I wonder if they weren’t able to care properly for their hedgehogs, and they refused to answer calls or respond to people asking about the hedgehogs they had bought in, wonder if all the people that wanted updates, the hogs didn’t make it and they didn’t want to tell them that. I’m just speculating.
