‘There’s a hedgehog by the street’. ‘Simply reverse the home’. They have been the shouts from the bed room instantly earlier than all of us went to see what was happening. There—in the midst of the day—was a younger however well-grown hedgehog, nowadays known as the West European Hedgehog (
Erinaceus europaeus). I saved sufficient hedgehogs within the Fifties and early 60s to know {that a} hedgehog out by day is in bother. There was an excessive amount of native constructing and street works throughout that week and we suspect their shelter had been disturbed. It was in a harmful place by a street and with solely an open small college area and a busy street within the different course. The home’s chief animal wrangler—not me—donned her gloves and shortly had the beast in a container. Hedgehogs if disturbed by day are hungry and so it was supplied the few earthworms to be discovered however a profusion of enormous slugs from the backyard. These it attacked with an excessive amount of slurping, wiping off slime and chewing with enthusiasm. We’re lucky in having a belt of woodland behind the home, nicely inhabited by hedgehogs, together with most likely the dad and mom of this one. We launched it with much more slugs which once more it devoured earlier than trundling off into the undergrowth. No sooner had we executed that than one other one was noticed in the identical spot as the primary. It too obtained a fast meal of slugs and was despatched on its manner.
With hedgehogs having declined within the UK it was a delight to see that we nonetheless have a breeding inhabitants. Now we have picked on a path digicam by night time however not within the numbers we had round 20 or 30 years in the past. They’re comparatively lengthy lived and it does take some time for a relict inhabitants to die out if breeding ceases.
What shocked us was the shortage of exterior parasites. Once we or the long-gone canine encountered hedgehogs many years in the past they have been crawling with fleas and sometimes had numerous ticks. 4-year outdated grand-daughter visiting from Hong Kong was thus capable of see and stroke a hedgehog for the primary time. Which jogs my memory. I need to put the path digicam out to see if we decide them up.
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Below the varsity fence just isn’t a superb place for a Hedgehog to be within the center
of the day |
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| Off into the woods |
