Britain's Coming Hedgehog Crisis

After yesterday’s news about hopeful Snowball the overweight albino hedgehog comes a rather more distressing report about our spiny mammalian friends: African pygmy hedgehogs are apparently the hot new pet in the UK. While you might think this to be a good thing, it is actually cause for concern: Much like the fate of the now-discarded chihuahua, the future does not look bright for the African pygmy hedgehog. How do we know? It has already happened here!

The only hedgehogs in the USA are African Pygmy Hedgehogs (APHs), kept as pets. They were, briefly, the next ‘big thing’ in the fad-pet world. Bored of terrapins and pot-bellied pigs, people leapt at the chance of owning a hedgehog, especially with the promise of great returns for their investment — like all pet crazes, there is something like pyramid-selling going on. As the craze takes hold, people invest in the animals to breed — and to breed breeding pairs to sell on to other people who want to join the racket. This did two things in the US, first it concentrated the bloodline and generated the fatal condition Wobbly Hedgehog Syndrome (no, I am not joking) and second it became economically unsustainable.

And, like all crazes, it collapsed, and now amazing people like Zug Standing Bear, who runs the Flash and Thelma Memorial Hedgehog Rescue Centre, are left to clear up the mess.

I must have been in a meeting when the whole American hedgehog craze happened, but no matter: Rich women of Britain! Be sensible this Christmas and do not get yourself a hedgehog for a pet. Why not adopt an orphan from some impoverished nation instead? Or is that too ‘08?