Nine years ago, young spouses John and Tonya Garner from Norfolk County in the UK spent all the money they received as a wedding gift on opening a help center for wild birds and animals injured by human hands or accidents. The center is called Foxy Lodge Wild Animal And Bird Rescue, and thanks to it, it was possible to save the lives of more than a hundred unfortunate representatives of the fauna.
One of these animals was the small bald hedgehog Nelson. Found him at the age of 18 months. In the wild, he had no chance of survival. Tiny and shy, it would become a simple prey for dexterous predators, so the care of people is so important to him.
Causes of baldness
There are at least 500 needles on the back of the hedgehogs. They provide protection and maintain body temperature. Needles are the same hair, only modified, hollow inside and consisting of keratin. Each of them is responsible for its own bundle of muscles, which, in danger, raise the needle. Like hair, they can fall out, replacing with new ones, but complete baldness indicates some kind of ailment: stress, metabolic disorder or skin disease. If new needles do not grow after falling out, then the animal will not survive for a long time, so a bald hedgehog is a unique phenomenon in the wild.
Betty
However, in addition to Nelson, there was another hedgehog with no needles named Betty in the shelter. She was found at the age of 6 weeks back in 2011, and since then she has not been able to grow needles. Spines grow only a couple of millimeters and immediately fall out. In addition to the lack of a needle cover, the animals are healthy, but Betty has a rare genetic disease, because of which she will never be able to grow needles.
A year earlier, a bald hedgehog, who was named Boldrick, got to Garner, but, unfortunately, he soon died of a cold. He was very similar to Betty, so the veterinarians decided that the hedgehogs were from the same litter and suffered from the same disease. The experience gained while caring for Boldrick gave a chance to save Betty and Nelson.
Spa treatments for hedgehogs
Every day, the shelter staff conducts massage sessions for Nelson, they rub him with almond oil. Such procedures were initially done with the hope of restoring the needles, but although this did not help, they did not stop. Indeed, thanks to this spa, the wrinkled skin of a bald hedgehog remains moisturized and soft. By the way, he himself really likes such a massage.
Despite the fact that the sun is contraindicated to them due to the lack of prickly cover, the center staff in good but cloudy weather let both hedgehogs walk in the garden.
The cause of Nelson's baldness is unknown; some of the center’s volunteers believe that the cause could have been some kind of stress that he had gained in the wild. Perhaps the needles will grow back. Tonya Garner considers Nelson a small miracle, no worse than his prickly brothers and no less cute.
The bald hedgehog is good because it can be safely embraced, which is often done by shelter volunteers. Despite the fact that he is unlikely to ever be able to return to freedom, this baby can only be envied: he is surrounded by warmth and care, has daily massage sessions and plenty of food, and he has a Betty hedgehog to communicate with a relative. It is unlikely that he misses the dangers of wildlife. Everyone loves him at the shelter, he has become a real celebrity both in the county itself and on the Internet. The video where Nelson is being massaged has become viral. And this is just wonderful, because the more people learn how to help animals with such a problem, the more hedgehogs will be saved.
Treatment
It is worth noting that sometimes treatment helps. For example, in 2014 in England, a hedgehog got to the veterinarians who lost needles after falling into a pipe filled with cleaning agent, but thanks to massage, caring, and cream with aloe vera extract, the animal began to grow bristles again.