The loss of my prickly go-to guy
Pets are a pretty common part of life for a lot of people. Dogs, cats, hamsters, fish, whatever – many people have some kind of pet.
Laura and I have different pets. We have all kinds of crazy pets – three leopard geckos, four ferrets, a fish tank, a dog, and Laura has had rats. I have had a pet for about 5 years that was always my go-to guy when I wanted to show off the collection – Spike the hedgehog. Spike was a handful of prickly cute attitude. If you woke him up, he was fussy and curled up into a ball, but once calmed down he was the perfect gentleman of hedgehogs.
Spike hadn’t been acting quite right lately, and while we had a vet appointment scheduled, it just wasn’t soon enough. I came home from work the day of the vet appointment to find that he had died that day.
Laura had just purchased a new camera lens for Christmas, and we had said on new years day (our fifth anniversary of getting Spike) we were going to get him out and take a bunch of pictures with the new gear. We were tired on new years, and almost didn’t do it, but I really wanted to, so we got him out, gave him a bath, trimmed his nails, and took pictures until he fell asleep, totally exhausted from all the excitement.
That was Tuesday. When we came home from work on Thursday, I went to get him out to take him to the vet and found that he had died.
He will be missed. It took him three of the five years I had him to get him comfortable coming out during the day, but the past few years he’s been coming out during the day, eating, drinking, and running in his wheel all in broad daylight.
