Gone Hog

 

In November, we took in a young hedgehog (blogged previously).  When we found her in our garden, she was not weighty enough to survive hibernation, so the objective was to help her put some weight on and release her again.

We had done this successfully once before a number of years ago.

It was more complicated than we remembered.

For a start, should we have taken her in at all? – with warmer winters, there was a chance she would have survived without our help.

Plus, when you put a hedgehog in a pet cage, it stresses them and their parasites grow in number.

I had brilliant hedgehog mentors in Esther who runs LondonColney Hedgehog Rescue and Jill who helps hedgehogs in St Albans.

We handled the hog as little as possible and did not make a pet of her.

But when Esther gave her some anti-parasite injections, a name was required for the records – Hermione.

That was the tipping point – we began to regard her as ‘our’ hedgehog.

We acclimatised her to winter temperatures in the garage, then released her early last month.   We put her out in a snug straw-lined house with a tunnel entrance to block cats and foxes.

We left food in a similarly protected hedgehog feeding station.

We had been warned that although some hedgehogs come back every night, others are never seen again.

Hermione turned out to be of the latter type. 

It is quite possible she fell foul of one of the local foxes.  I guess we’ll never know.

However, in our imagination, she is trundling along the hedges of the nearby school field, snaffling beetles and generally leading the life of a hog in clover.

 

Please support the amazing work of London Colney Hedgehog Rescue:- 

http://londoncolneyhedgehogrescue.weebly.com/