The first time I met Moriyah Ramberg, I immediately noticed the stuffed hedgehog hanging from her keychain.
“Oh, there’s a good story behind it,” she said the first time I mentioned it. “It’s a Tinder story.”
Now that I’ve heard the tale, I regret not immedately asking for full details. It was only recently, over a year after I first noticed it swinging from the ignition, that I got the full details of the date she had with whom she still refers to as “Hedgehog Man.”
Moriyah, a third-year English student who transferred from Drake after freshman year, met the man in question on Tinder. She calls him J.
Their date began at brunch. J then invited her back to his apartment to meet his pet hedgehog (once she reached this part of the story, I immediately got Ted-Mosby-and-his-teacup-pig vibes. Nice play, J).
“You know, if you fill the tub up, they’ll swim around,” he told her. They made their way to the bathroom. It is here that the story took a turn.
J placed his pet in the tub and, in trying to fill the tub, accidentally turned the showerhead on instead. In his shock at being soaked from above, J started to slip and grabbed for the shower curtain (a bulletproof plan). Instead, he stumbled into the tub, shower still streaming down on top of him, the hedgehog still somewhere in the tub.
Moriyah, unsure of what to do after watching her internet date almost crush his pet hedgehog to death, tried to help find the animal. Once found, though, the hedgehog had no interest in any more human contact after nearly meeting her demise at the hand of the man she trusted with her life, and scurried off immediately after being set down.
J and Moriyah ran around the house frantically searching for the traumatized hedgehog, J still soaked and dripping from the unexpected shower. She was finally found, but J was in a panic. “I hurt her leg,” he whimpered to his confused date. “Oh, god, I hurt her leg.”
Moriyah saved the day. Aware of only one way she could help, she whipped out her phone and found the nearest 24-hour pet hospital to which he could take his injured pet. They departed ways as he took her to the clinic and she returned home.
I sat in shock after hearing this story, torn between wanting to laugh and feeling that would be disrespectful to the near-death experience of this innocent animal. And also this dude’s pride. That date did not go well.
“What a wild story,” I said.
“Yep. That’s how I almost witnessed the death of a boy’s hedgehog on a second date.”
Photos: Header, Glenna Clemen, Facebook – Pictures 1&2 from Moriyah Ramberg, Facebook