Rachel Wise.
Last week, through no fault of my own, I found myself looking after two baby hedgehogs.
I didn't do it deliberately. They were just ... there ... and patently too young to be out on their own so I scooped them up and emailed national Hedgehog Rescue.
Yes there is one, and no they don't go around overnight trying to shoo hedgies off the roads so they don't get run over. Although that would be a good idea.
Hedgehog Rescue dishes out advice about how to look after sick, injured or orphaned hedgehogs. They advised me what to feed my spiky foster-hogs and informed me that orphaned HHs (because those of us in the inner circle abbreviate hedge hogs to HH) have to be cared for until they are 600g in weight, for optimum survival.
Mine both weighed in at between 100 and 200g so I figured I was going to be baby-hog-sitting for a while.
"Good luck," emailed HH Rescue, "and watch out for the Hedgehog Haters". No, not car tyres. It seems there are people who don't like hedgies. Fair enough, they're not exactly cuddly, but who, I wondered, has time to go round actually hating them?
Withing a couple of days on a diet of kitten biscuits, wet cat food and freeze dried mealworms my hoglets had put on about 5g each.
They had also attracted some – well, not the dreaded HH-haters exactly, more like hedgehog purveyors of doom.
The HH-doomers had kindly informed me that my prickly pals were going to infest me with fleas, ringworm, salmonella, tuberculosis, gangrene, rabies and quite possibly ebola.
I looked at my hoggy house guests and they looked back innocently. They didn't look overly rabid but I wasn't sure what a rabid hedgehog would look like so I decided to seek expert advice.
Thankfully my vet has had time to get used to my queries so she didn't turn a hair when I rushed in and asked what I was likely to catch from hedgehogs.
"Just fleas and ringworm," she said nonchalantly.
Oh, okay," I said and went and purchased several pairs of hedgehog handling gloves. Okay they were gardening gloves but I think it might catch on.
That afternoon after hedgehog cleaning out and feeding time I went for a walk round the block, as I said something silly in my New Year's resolutions about health and fitness.
I was halfway down a hill when I saw something on the road that shouldn't really have been there.
It was a baby hedgehog.
I couldn't leave it wandering in the middle of the road and it was too small to be out on its own so I scooped it up.
As I juggled it to stop it pricking me it reached out with its cute little furry face ... and bit me.
Then it hung on.
So obviously I had to take it home with me.
This hedgehog was very thin and very thirsty. After it had inhaled a heap of cat food and had several big drinks of water it weighed in at a wopping 95g. I hoped it would put on the next 505g quickly.
I put it in with hog 1 and hog 2 and realised my cat cage was not going to be big enough for long.
I put "big plastic bin" and "lots more cat food and mealworms" on my shopping list.
My husband just rolled his eyes and asked if I liked the term "mad hog lady". I said no and that the hogs were going back to the wild as soon as possible.
He asked if there was a chance I could keep them somewhere other than the bathroom, as they creeped him out by staring at him when he got out of the shower.
I said I would get right onto it.
I marked each hog with a blob of different coloured nail polish and started a weight chart for each of them.
I have sacrificed my kitchen scales – I don't want them back in the kitchen again in case the vet was a little bit wrong re the rabies and ebola.
I have designated hog handling gloves and a red bucket for all their food and accessories.
It's all very sensible, I keep telling myself as more friends and family start muttering "crazy hog lady ..."
To escape any vestige of hog madness, last weekend my husband decided to go and help our daughters with their lawns.
I had just got on the internet to ask "how do you tell if a hedgehog is a boy or a girl?" when he arrived home carrying a supermarket bag (cloth, reusable, as we're good like that).
He held it out to me and said "I have something for you."
I looked in the bag and a baby hedgehog looked back at me.
"I found it stuck in a drain," my husband said
The fourth hedgehog sports a blob of scarlet nail polish and weighs in at 234g.