Illegal Pets: Beatrice the Cannibal Hedgehog

College students can barely take care of themselves, much less their pets. This hasn’t stopped a few brave souls though—read their horror stories, their delights, and that one time they brought their mouse to Lowell Lecture Hall in a Starbucks cup. Enjoy the second in this miniseries here!:

Flyby: When did you first get your pet?
Pet owner: I got my pet about a month into school from a really ratchet pet store in Allston. She was on sale.

Flyby: How easy was it raising a pet? How did you find time to take care of it?
Pet owner: It was much less difficult than I had anticipated. I would hold her while I was doing homework and put her in a pouch in my sweatshirt, so I would just be doing my reading and she would just be chilling. I live in a single, so it was nice to have something there I guess.”

Flyby: Did your pet have any cool tricks? Weird tricks? Any tricks?
Pet owner: She loved to swim in my sink, so I would just put the stopper in my sink and fill it up and she would swim around, and I thought that was pretty awesome.

Flyby: How’d you lose your pet?
Pet owner: I thought that she was getting really fat, so I was really concerned and started limiting food intake and exercising her on her wheel and everything. And then one day, I came back from class and there were about five worm-y things in the cage. I thought she had exploded, I’m not even kidding you. And then I was like, ‘Holy shit, those are babies!’ They were so weird-looking and I was really freaked out. And I told my friends, ‘Guys, my hedgehog just had fucking babies and I don’t really know what to do!’ So I found a home for each of them. My research told me that hedgehogs will often eat their first litter if they feel threatened. It’s just easier for them to have more babies than to try to keep them alive so I tried to keep it really quiet in my room and everything.

But one day, a week after she gave birth, I decided to clean her cage and I picked up one baby and then another one and so on. Then I picked up the last one and instead of moving, it rolled over on its back and the hedgehog had eaten out its face and brains. It was literally just the back part of its skull and the hedgehog body. I screamed and I group-texted, and my friend got rid of the body for me while I freaked out. And then I was so afraid she would eat the other babies and it would happen again so I just brought her back to the pet store.”