Hedgehog gave toddler fright of her life after biting her toe as she slept in bed

A hedgehog unleashed a toothy attack on a toddler tucked up in bed, forcing her family to flee downstairs.

Little three-year-old Elsie had the fright of her life when she woke up to a wild animal’s teeth sinking into her little toe.

Mum Chelsey Fowler, 32, bolted awake at her daughter’s screams and was stunned to pull back the covers to find a creature hanging onto Elsie’s bleeding foot.

As someone who had never seen a hedgehog before, Elsie was unsurprisingly horrified at the sight of her little prickly attacker.

Chelsey, a care worker, said: “It was quarter past four in the morning and my daughter Elsie was in bed with me and she woke up screaming and holding her leg.

“In a blind panic I grabbed her leg to find out what was wrong, and this hedgehog was hanging off her baby toe.

“I panicked because I didn’t expect there to be a hedgehog. I pushed it off her foot and it scarpered under the wardrobe.

“Elsie was absolutely hysterical bless her, she’d never seen a hedgehog before or even knew what it was.

“I can’t image if it had gone into the cot with Gracie sleeping in there, she was quite a big lady this hedgehog. She is massive.”

With the prickly intruder still at large Chelsey phoned NHS 111 for advice as she cleaned the bite wound, The Mirror reports.

She said: “At first I don’t think they knew whether I was joking or not.

“They said not to panic as the bleeding had stopped and to ring the doctor in the morning and get a tetanus shot, which we did.

“We all slept downstairs after that, and Elsie kept talking about the mean hedgehog.

Since the attack, Elsie has been on antibiotics and Chelsey took the hedgehog to a local animal sanctuary.

Chelsey’s home in Stratford-up-Avon, Warwickshire, backs onto a local pathway known as the Greenway, as well as Stratford-upon-Avon Racecourse.

But she said she had no idea how the animal got into her home or how it had avoided her two cats.

She said: “We had been doing some gardening during the day so maybe we disturbed it, but it must have come in during the day because the doors were all locked at night.”

Local rescue charity Hedgehog Friendly Town said this wasn’t the first hedgehog that they had heard of climbing someone’s stairs this year.

The charity said: “We checked it over and it was a large female with no obvious injuries.

“We have had three hedgehogs that have found their way into houses in 2020, two of which have ended up upstairs. They are great at climbing.

“This female may well have been looking for a place to nest as it’s baby season at the moment.

“Also, with the weather being so warm they are desperately in need of water. So please could people put out shallow dishes of water and maybe some food for the hedgehogs.”