Well, That's One Way to Get Pink-Eye.

I got hedgehog poop in my eye last night.

Hedgehogs are little poop machines. They are insectivores/carnivores, not rodents. They have fangs, and like alligators, their jaws are made to clamp down, not open up.

This is a Vlad stand-in from Google (supplied by mytutorlist.blogspot.com)... Vlad's teeth are longer,
but I can't get him to sit for a picture. 

Their diet is like a cat. High protein, high fiber. Like tiny weight lifters whose outsides are as prickly and threatening as their roid-rage filled insides.

The high-protein diet poop is totally disproportional to body size. Vlad is a baby hedgehog. He has 7 more months of growing to do before he's qualified to write for this blog. His digestive system, however, did not get that memo. 

Vlad lives in a Sterilite Christmas tree tub (which is actually a highly recommended hedgehog house, not my own hillbilly pet rig) heated with an infrared incubation bulb that I stuck in a lamp that I ripped off of my drafting table (THAT is my hillbilly pet rig). If they get cold, they have the natural instinct to hibernate, but they can't actually pull it off in captivity. Hibernation is fatal to the domesticated hedgehogs. Sissy la-las, all dying of naps. Geez.

 (It wasn't really necessary to tell you about hibernating, but I'm hoping my Dad will read it, feel guilty, and stop complaining about the sound of the space heater we use to keep Vlad warm when we visit interfering with his ability to hear re-runs of the Big Bang Theory.)

Vlad roots for the Jayhawks. He's also hiding under the wheel. Pooping.

Once a week, I have to clean his box and wash the fleece. Vlad only poops underneath the wheel, at the very bottom edge of the fleece. Well, and in the wheel. While running. Exercise is a hedgehog laxative. By the time I change it, the poop is usually hard and dry because of the heat bulb. I take the fleece outside and shake off the poop before putting it in our washer.

Do you see where this is going yet?

Shaking off the fleece, I whipped a hardened turd right into my open eyeball.

There I was, freezing cold, in my jammies, wearing a pair of slippers INSIDE a pair of moccasins. Our patio lights lit up my mainstreet-facing front porch like a broadway show for anyone who drove by. Just minding my own business, shaking some poop, then BAM. It was dark. I didn't even see it coming. But I'm sure the motorists of mainstreet/KS Hwy 14 saw the reaction. It went like this.

*Stare at the fleece piece in shock, 0.01 seconds*

*double over in pain, 10 seconds*

*"this is icky" dance, including horizontal variation on jazz hands, 20 seconds*

"OMG, I hope none of it is stuck in there"
*feeling eye with dirty, dusty, frozen fingers, 5 seconds*

"What am I doing out here. I need to wash this out"

*open door*
*remember that the hamper is still outside and needs to come inside, because that's way more important than washing my eye*

*turn to get the hamper*
*door slams into turd-injured face*

WHOLE new meaning to "getting sh*tfaced".