#HogletNights

In bed. I was supposed to be watching episodes of Desmond's but for the last 20 mins I've been entertained by Murray. Murray is our African pygmy hedgehog, we've not even had him a week yet. A few things about Murray:

• He has very sharp teeth
• He likes to scratch himself
• He can run very fast
• His prickles hurt

I've actually just had to stop here as Murray has just climbed into the bottom of my wardrobe where all my shoes are. I need to check on him, make sure he hasn't gotten caught in shoes. He did get caught in my knickers and I had to winch him out, tangled in a pair of M&S finest. I had to coax him out with a cotton bud which he wanted to chase. Nice.

• He sleeps A LOT
• He crunches biscuits like a motherfucker

Anyway - he's all round awesome. He's very different to Linford (my tortoise in so many ways). Linford is low maintenance, not affectionate, doesn't require a lot of attention and is just happy being on his own and climbing on stuff. He eats greens, he poops, he climbs about and then he goes back to bed. It goes sleep, eat, climb, sleep, more sleep, poop, sleep, climb, eat, poop and more sleep again. Murray goes sleep, sleep, sleep, sleep, sleep, poop poop, poop, poop, poop, poop, eat, run around, run around, run around (this goes on for some time) and then back to sleep. He's nocturnal so having his cage in our bedroom probably isn't a good idea!

In the last 20 mins he's got a little routine going. He jumps out of his box onto the floor, circumnavigates the laundry bin and then spends a few seconds seeing how far he can ram his head in a toilet tube. Runs around with said tube on his head (he gets it WELL past the ears) until I pull it off and then off he trots around the bottom of the bed. Then he comes up the other side of the bed, having to tackle 2 pairs of knickers on the go (one, as previously mentioned is the M&S no VPL black knickers. The other is a cream cotton thong with green polka dots and pink trim). He then crawls down the back of the bed before jumping back into this box.

The only variations on this have been when I used an Alan Partridge DVD case as a breakwater (geddit?) stop him going down the back of the bed, when he climbed in the wardrobe and earlier on when he tried to leap down the stairs. 

Still a little frightened of holding him as his prickles hurt but hopefully when he becomes more used to me, he won't put them up as much.

I could watch him run around all night but I can't cope with the hag from hell on a night of no sleep due to hedgehog-fancying!