Local Paper Photo Contest

LaFoto · Mar 23, 2004

Our local newspaper is having a "Photo of the Month"-contest going on this year: every month, the readers may send in just ANY photo, really ANY, and my contribution to last month's "Photo of the Month" won Second. This is the photo that I have contributed this time (it's from a while ago, we're not required to go and take photos for the contest, we may just hand in some):

Mia, the cat, respectfully eyeing up Erika, the hedgehog

We found three little hedgehogs in autumn of 2001 and decided they may well need some extra food before they'd go into hibernation. Seems like the other two of the litter made it by themselves, this one, however, was sick with pneumonia and we had to keep her warm and give her antibiotics before we could let her hibernate. This was in the spring of 2002, after Erika had woken from her hibernation and was safe and sound, so that we could let her run freely in the end.

terri · Mar 23, 2004

What a cute shot! I think it's totally cool that you nursed this little hedgehog back to health. :love:

I wish I lived in a place where one could come across a hedgehog, but where I live, the wildlife you see is mostly roadkill. :?

karissa · Mar 23, 2004

AWWWWWW! Hedgehogs are sooo cute! I love their little faces. I like this picture. It seems to catch the curiosity in all cats and more so in little ones.

mrsid99 · Mar 23, 2004

Neat shot and hedgehogs are real cute but I have a question....every hedgehog I've ever seen was infested with fleas so how did you cope?

LaFoto · Mar 23, 2004

We took the lot (while we still had all three of them) to the vet first thing and had them treated against parasites. That helped us, so we would not get fleas ourselves *shudder*, and them who were too young and light to hibernate like they were when we found them and so they'd more easily gain more weight. The one boy from this group, who we called "Zecki", suffered much more from ticks than fleas and we had to have the vet pull all those out from between his pricks, too.
The vet never charged anything for his treatment, by the way, for he says he wouldn't charge those who take it upon them to help these little ones. Nice, isn't it?

Harpper · Mar 24, 2004

I like the story this picture captures. The cat is in for one scary experience. I think you should name this picture ouch. That was my reaction when I saw it. :wink:

LaFoto · Mar 24, 2004

Our cat Mia never touched Erika, the hedgehog. She was so intimidated by this "ouchy"-thing, she stayed away with respect!
I might contribute just a few others of the time, despite the fact that those won't go into the contest, only the one taken in our living room (with the blue tiled floor):

OK, there's only this one uploaded into my photo server's albums, so this is the other one I can show you. She was highly curious at who was moving about there, but too afraid to even stretch out her paw!

(Too bad that both, the hedgehog's tail and the cat's tail were cut off here, right? Hm, I was concentrating on Mia's expression more than on anything else, I'm afraid).