His Name is Pogglebee

This is probably the cutest picture I have of the new baby hedgehog thus far. We took this after he was all snuggly and dried from his first bath here, so he's fuzzy and squeaky clean :)
Check out his adorable little pink feet!
And, awww, that little pink tail that's so short.

We have named the little guy Master Pogglebee, most often called Pogglebee or Poggles here. His name is a pygmy hedgehog (pog) - ified version of the character Bumblebee from Transformers. I wanted to make it Mr. Pogglebee, but my sister says that Mr. is too old for a baby. So we made it Master instead. I don't think anyone calls him Master Pogglebee, but that's his official name :)

So, after purchasing 150 mealworms to start a mealworm colony for Pogglebee, I have discovered that he doesn't like mealworms. I was sooo delighted to give him a fat mealworm yesterday, but he just sniffed it and looked at me like, "What?" I pushed it towards him so he went and put it into his mouth. I thought for sure he was chewing it and was going to eat it, but then he dropped it back out unharmed. Then, he sat on it.

I was dumbstruck. He's a hedgehog. Hedgehogs are insectivores. He should LOVE mealworms. But, nope, he's just not like that. I hid the mealworm in his food bowl under his cat food.

In the morning, the cat food was gone, but the mealworm was still there. Ack! Maybe the mealworm had offended him though because he had killed it by biting is head half off. "You again! Have you been eating my food!?!" *bite* "Ugh! Yuck! Ick!" *leaves dead worm behind*

Sigh, he has yet to realize that the worm IS his food.

He's actually quite the picky eater. So far, he doesn't like peaches, blueberries, or carrots either. He annointed with the blueberries and carrots instead and then left them behind. The only thing that he has liked so far other than his crunchy cat food is a small piece of black plum that I gave him today. He didn't eat very much of it though. He sort of just put his whole mouth over it and then scraped a little bit off.

I'm going to leave it in his cage tonight to see if he eats more of it later. I'll try again with the mealworm too in his food bowl. Lol... I have no idea what I'm going to do with 150 mealworms if he doesn't eat them.

Anyhoo, I hope it's a good night and he doesn't make too much of a mess. He's still a hit or miss with his litter box. Yesterday, he discovered the newspaper pellets under the paper towel in his litter box and started to play in the pellets. He tunneled his way all around the litter box, dug in it, rolled in it, laid sideways to bat at it and hug it. It was all very odd, but also incredibly cute. Of course I was also groaning at the fact that this was his litter box and it must be dirty. So I changed all the litter this morning in case he decides to play in it again tonight. The problem with this is that his litter box didn't smell like a litter box anymore so he started to poop all over his house.

I just can't win. I'm going to have to resist cleaning everything and to just let him identify the proper places to go to the bathroom by smell for now. I don't think he's really seeing the litter box so much as smelling it.

Hedgehogs are so complicated!!! :P