Return to Sender: A Prickly Situation

Dear Pennsylvania Game Commission:

After seeing the photograph above on Cute Overload, I decided that I'd like nothing more than to adopt a little hedgehog for myself. I found Hedgehog Central (through Cute Overload, of course), and started doing research. Much to my dismay, I discovered that Pennsylvania is one of only five states to ban hedgehogs as pets. In fact, if someone were to discover that a person had a pet hedgehog, you, the PGC, could raid that person's home and confiscate and destroy said pets. It's like a marijuana bust. With a live, screaming, pile of flaming contraband.

I consulted a friend of mine who is a vet student at Penn Vet. He informed me that the special species department at the vet hospital has been known to treat a few pet hedgehogs (that is to say, they won't call you if one comes in for treatment), but also explained to me why hedgehogs are banned statewide. Apparently, hedgehogs can carry and transmit foot-and-mouth disease (FMD). Now, it's always been my understanding -- an understanding corroborated by my friend the future-doctor-of-all-species -- that FMD is something animals usually can and will eventually recover from. But FMD hurts dairy production in cattle, and we wouldn't want that, obviously, so animals who show symptoms of FMD are destroyed to keep the disease from spreading to other animals in the herd.

Here's where I've got a problem with, though: my potential pet hedgehog would be NOWHERE near anyone's dairy herd. Most hedgehogs wouldn't. I'd understand if you were trying to regulate breeders, who are often in large rural areas near cattle herds, but hedgehog owners in Philly who've never even seen a cow that wasn't ground into hamburger probably won't bring their little prickly pets within a hundred miles of a cattle ranch. Consider Bessie safe. And let me bring home my new friend.