I had a cute animal vet visit the other day. Poor Daffodil is losing some of her quills. Or lots of her quills. Hedgehogs do a quilling thing when they are young where they lose and regrow quills, like a baby teeth kind of a scenario. At first I thought maybe we were dealing with that. But then I had to do some research and found out mites were very likely what was going on. Poor baby. Poor cranky baby. Daffodil is the sharpest and the crankiest of my girls. Of course, if you were losing your quills you'd be cranky, too. However, she's only been losing her quills for a couple of weeks and she's been kinda cranky from day one. Just sayin.
The vet's office told me to allow time in my schedule to let her come slowly out of anesthesia should that be required at the check-up. Because if they roll up into a hissing crank ball there is very little a vet can do to check them out to make sure all is well.
Fortunately, Daffodil did not require anesthesia. She did cooperate. The only unpleasantness was a) the pooped in carry bag which probably happened while she tried to climb out while I drove the 5 miles to the vet. Her bristly little head was peeking out at me. You can be certain I carried her slightly differently on the way home. b)The saddest scenario happened though while I was cuddling her when the vet went to check the skin flakes for mites. She was crawling all over me and I think she caught her toenail on a metal zipper I had on my jacket.
I saw blood on my hand and thought she had stabbed me with a quill. Then I looked down at my shirt, bloody footprints all over it. Sure enough her little paw was bleeding. The vet walks in and recoils. "Augh!!! Did she bite you?!?" He stopped the bleeding and gave me 6 little syringes of topical medicine to get rid of mites. (Three for Daisy because they love to share with their friends.) Her little foot is fine. All is well.
Already it feels like the loss of quills is stopping. Now regrowing them might get dicey. She may stab me on purpose. Fortunately, she only has a strip of bald sparse quillage.
