# help!!! escaped hedgie!!!!



## alma&dex (Jan 17, 2013)

I feel like such a horrible mom right now!!!! 

Last night around 11:30 EST Dexter was making some sounds and walking around his cage and drinking water, etc. and I didn't remember being woken up (the water bottle is fairly loud every once in a while) and I went to sleep. 

I had a horrible dream that someone else had fed their hedgie the wrong thing and so, like most mornings, I went to go nudge him and say hello and make sure all was okay. EXCEPT HE WASN'T THERE!

I am very nervous because I've spent the last hour scouring every nook and cranny that I can with a flashlight trying to find him, even stepping hard on the floor thinking that might scare him if he's sleeping and make him ball up and hiss or something along those lines.... NOTHING. No poops, no dark spots from pee, literally NOTHING. :shock:

Please please please does anyone have any ideas? He has never been able to make it out of his cage before and he's had this cage going on 6 months at this point!!!! It's a C&C and there is extra chloroplast over the ramp so that he didn't climb out that way, and an extra piece on the side over the uncovered part of the ramp because he is quite the climber and I have not had any problems until now! 

Please someone out there have some ideas!!!! I will keep looking in the meantime. I'm so afraid he will have ingested something horrible, etc that was under a chair or something.  I did not wake to any hedgie screaming etc, but I am not the lightest sleeper in the world either. Please help! I am going to call my breeder when it's a more decent hour for a Saturday morning because I know one of hers escaped once and to ask for ideas. 

Thank you all in advance


----------



## MochiAndMe (Jul 13, 2013)

Make sure the house is warm enough for him. I would also put out treats he likes to try and lure him out. If he's on fleece bedding, maybe put the used bedding that was in the cage out in case he tries to "go home" and burrows under it...

I'm not sure what else you can do except just check everywhere he could be.


----------



## alma&dex (Jan 17, 2013)

I had some of his other liners laying out to wash in the laundry and thought he might have gone there but he is NOWHERE TO BE FOUND. GAH! I am freaking out!!!! The house temp is well regulated as it's geothermal, etc. but I am going to bump the temp up from 72 to... 74? I know this sounds crazy but really the whole house maintains the temp. I even checked downstairs. I'm so worried he's injured himself or something


----------



## alma&dex (Jan 17, 2013)

I found some poops ON THE STAIRS and a pee and some other poops downstairs. I am so worried he is injured and I still haven't found him. I am guessing he didn't make it up the stairs but we have radiant heat floors for most of the downstairs so he could be anywhere. I fear he is behind the stove but I see no sign of a hedgie in the dust that the vaccuum doesn't reach....


----------



## AngelaH (Jul 24, 2012)

I would block off rooms if you can (close the doors) to keep him from going where you just looked. Yes, he could be anywhere, but best bet will be a small dark cranny ground level. Some have been found in warm spots inside the back of fridges or in the baseboards of cabinets. By sectioning off rooms/areas you can put out a favorite smelly treat in each area and that might narrow down your search area because he should hopefully come out looking for something to eat eventually, as long as he's warm enough. 

Good luck! I know how panicked you must be. When I 'lost' Thistle I found her inside a comforter, nestled inbetween the cover and comforter. I had already picked it up and shook it out once, this time my hand just happened to touch something pokey.


----------



## alma&dex (Jan 17, 2013)

I FOUND HIM. Thank you both for your early Saturday morning comments here, they are much appreciated. He found the coldest possible corner of the house DOWNSTAIRS (yes, he made his way down an entire flight of stairs) to curl up in and try to hibernate. He is currently bundled in fleece inside my hoodie so he will warm up. He is responsive but not super responsive. My breeder gave me some ideas because I assumed he was trying to hibernate when I found him in the chilly corner and he wasn't hissing at me. 

His loft is definitely going off of his cage until I find a way to Dexter proof things and he will be seeing the vet on Wednesday just in case. 

Ahhh! I am so relieved. I'm so glad I kept looking... if I hadn't I'm sure he would have been in a worse state...  I will give updates as he unrolls.


----------



## Annie&Tibbers (Apr 16, 2013)

And now you can breathe! Good job finding him, and really nicely done being paranoid enough to check that he was still in his home this morning!

Until you figure out the cage-escape, can you close doors (main, closest) in the room he's in so at least he can't escape into the great wide world?

Keep an eye out for any tenderness, any discolouration in his poop (black, red, anywhere in between), or other hidden signs of injury.

After a hibernation attempt, his immune system will be weaker, so you'll want to keep his cage temperature bumped up a few degrees (for how long? not sure), be extra-paranoid of every sniffle developing into a URI, etc.


----------



## alma&dex (Jan 17, 2013)

Yes I can breathe FOR NOW. Unfortunately, the house is pretty open, but I think I can put some barriers up and I am taking his loft ramp away, which should prevent escapes - the chloroplast is 10.5"-11" around the whole cage and his loo is under the loft, so he can't climb out that way... I did get him to show me his feets, etc. no discoloration anywhere that I could tell but he was a little huffy so will check again in a few hours for his normal cuddle time and see if he will allow a more thorough examination. I also made sure he has fresh pine in the loo so that I can look for poops. I have an appointment on Weds with the vet but can move it up to Monday if there is discolored poop, etc. Good idea about bumping up the temp, didn't think about that and I will make sure to listen for sniffles, etc. He made some sort of sniffly sounds while he was in my sweatshirt and hadn't uncurled, but none of that since I put him back into his modified no loft home and he chose a less warm spot to curl up...


----------



## Annie&Tibbers (Apr 16, 2013)

Hmm. My home is pretty open-concept, so for during playtime, I built coroplast barriers to enclose the room. He proved he could burrow under the (stick his nose underneath, lift, and escape!), so I modified the barriers to be an L-shape with a base on "his" side that he'd stand on when trying to escape, then put a solid object behind so he couldn't just knock it over. Maybe a nightly barricade like that to enclose "his" room?

Some nights, we set up the barricades, and leave the cage open for my small friend to come out when he feels like exploring. Since I don't really want to play the "is he in his cage, or is he hiding from me?" game, I rigged up a little fleece-curtain with bells so that when he comes out, it jingles like crazy and gets my attention. If you're a sound sleeper it might not work, but that's another option to modify to suit your cage as a "My hedgehog escaped!" alarm system.

For total escape artists, some people need to have cages with roofs. That doesn't fix a climbing-inside-cage problem, though -- he could still hurt himself by climb-fall-climb-fall.  Does he have enough entertainment inside his cage to keep him occupied (a wheel!) so he's not climbing out of boredom? If he's such a dedicated climber, you might need to move to a different style of cage (one with vertical bars, or slick sides) to curb his habit...


----------



## alma&dex (Jan 17, 2013)

Annie&Timbers, 

He has never escaped his cage before so this is a very scary first - his ramp was the only way I can conceive of him getting out because I don't think he's THAT good of a climber and he never got out when it was just a single level C&C - the loft was added on later... 

He has his wheel every other night because otherwise I think he would run off any weight he has built up. He runs pretty much all night from what I can tell. But yes, of course, he has a wheel. Also some balls although he has never really been taken with them - the bells inside cat/ferret balls seem to scare him a bit and other balls he just doesn't really like them, I guess? Sometimes they're in a different spot in the morning but it's hard to know if that's because he just bumped into them or intentionally was moving them. 

I will set up a barrier this evening to try to prevent escape/going down the stairs in case he manages to get out but I doubt he will be able to. The chloroplast seems to be high enough that he just sort of has pawed at it and then slides down it and gives up after a little while. When I initially went with C&C I measured as high as he was able to reach on the cubes and then added an inch or two just for safe measure...


----------



## Annie&Tibbers (Apr 16, 2013)

Hm. Can you give him the wheel every night, but give him a higher-fat mix? For my hardcore little runner (13 km last night!), I mix 2 cat foods and 1 kitten food (which are typically higher fat) to maintain his weight.


----------



## alma&dex (Jan 17, 2013)

That's not a bad idea... that made me nervous because I was afraid I'd end up giving him too much fat or something. What mix do you use if you don't mind me asking as I'm currently in about-to-buy-more-food mode perhaps this would be a good switch...


----------



## Annie&Tibbers (Apr 16, 2013)

The kitten food is Blue Buffalo Wilderness Kitten. When figuring out the proportions, I started with a simple 1:1:1 mix (everything in equal parts), and kept an eye on weekly weight trends. It's been just fine for the last several months, but if it starts going crazy, it's pretty easy to decrease the proportion of kitten-food to drop the total fat content.


----------

