How I lost the battle of Mother's Day

Each year I become Mumzilla and insist on a Mother's day outing featuring at least two of my three children. (Use this link for outing ten years ago)

Last year we visited Sissinghurst  and this year we planned to build on the Vita Sackville-West theme.  Carenza and I had watched Orlando - both the current West End play and the Tilda Swinton film adapted from the Virginia Woolf novella in which she made clear her adoration of Vita.  Our Mother’s Day outing would be to Knole, the great Tudor pile which inspired Orlando.

Perran had a plausible alibi for Mother’s Day itself, so we went a week early.  Allowable slippage I thought. 

However, it turned out to be just the beginning of the rot setting in.

One of the purposes of having a Mother’s Day outing is to avoid the church service where all women are given a brightly coloured polyanthus.  (Something really annoys me about it, but I can’t put my finger on what.)   This year I had to contract an actual cold to get out of it.  Made me miserable for a few days, but worth it.

Then Pascoe’s Mother’s Day card arrived, adding a new layer of weirdness.  He had given a photo of me to an AI program and asked it to make me into a Roman lady (as I am a Classics teacher).  Unfortunately, he had selected a picture where I was holding a hedgehog (why?), which then rather dominated – see pic.

Maybe I should give Mother’s Day a rest.  After all, apart from grumbling and sending the occasional WhatsApp, I’m doing very little mothering nowadays – except of course, when I find an orphaned hedgehog.

 

 

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/

 

How to name a Hedgehog

We are sheltering a young hedgehog until it gains weight and can safely be allowed to hibernate.

I am reluctant to name it since it is a wild creature.

However, Nigel and Carenza insist it should have a name.

And that the name must begin with H.

Nigel favours Hodgkins, but it reminds me of Hodgkin’s lymphoma.

Carenza advocates Hannibal, but its far too Silence of the Lambs.

I continue to call it ‘The hedgehog.’

The other evening when Nigel was in a meeting, I went to the bathroom (where its cage is) to give the hedgehog its brimming dish of catfood.

Only to discover that the cage door was open and there was nobody at home.

I stared at the open door catch.  Was this a ‘Clever Girl’ moment as in Jurassic Park when the velociraptor learns how to work doorhandles?

Or was it just another sign of my own decrepitude – had I perhaps failed to lock up after mucking the cage out that morning?

On hands and knees, I peered under every bed, seeking Hannibal-Hodgkins.  But I did not call its name as it would freeze, curl up and go silent. Which is exactly how a wild animal should behave.

And, more importantly, calling its name would also have alerted Nigel to the fact I had let the hedgehog escape.

Eventually, a slight rustling led me to a cosy nook beside the chest of drawers in our room.

With garden gauntlets, I returned the thwarted hedgehog to its cage, and the compensations of  nest-box and catfood.

But I do at least now have a name for it.

Houdini Hedgehog.

Photo by Alexas_Fotos on Unsplash

A hedgehog lodger

 

Late on Friday night, Nigel went out to the compost heap, as is his habit.  I know he is having a wee on the compost (‘to nitrogenate it’) but neither of us chooses to mention this.

He was gone longer than usual.  I began idly to wonder if a compost monster had reared up and grabbed him in its grassy jaws.

But no, he burst in saying ‘Guess what I’ve found!’

I accompanied him into the dark garden to find…nothing.

Apparently, there had been a hedgehog snuffling about by the compost bin.  Hedgehogs are not quiet creatures, so we caught up with it by the fence. At first I was delighted but soon realised the hedgehog was undersized – a young one.

We googled the weight at which a hedgehog may safely hibernate – 600g.  Below that, it may well die in its sleep.

We put our young friend on the kitchen scales – 475g.

We would hold onto it until it reached fighting weight and could successfully doze through the remainder of winter.  We had done it once before, a decade ago.

Tricia very kindly lent us a dog crate and Duncan brought it round.  We fussed about hedgehog food and bedding.

Carenza, who had taken charge of our previous hedgehog lodger had another preoccupation –

‘What will you call it?  Hannibal?’

‘We don’t know the sex yet.’

‘Well, I think Hannibal is a pretty name for a boy or a girl.’

But we haven’t named it yet.  After all – it’s not a pet, but a little creature who must be returned to the wild one day.  And that is what we are working towards.

Photo by Alexas_Fotos on Unsplash