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/

 

Naughty Wildlife

Wildlife is good and we should make more space for it.

That's the mantra.
And of course I agree with it.
However, wildlife doesn't always respect our boundaries.

We love our garden and have designated areas for wildlife, such as the pond, the bird feeders and the bug houses. But recently some animal has been failing to read the signs - our lawn is dotted with yellow dinner-plate-sized patches.  The grass is dead where something has been weeing on it.
Similarly my parents love feeding the birds and keep the bird food in the side passage inside a sturdy plastic bin whose lid is secured by two strong rubber bungees.  Lately, at night, something has been efficiently removing the bungees and eating the bird food. 

We don’t think it’s a robin.

Our unruly specimen of wildlife turned out to be a mangy urban fox which marks our lawn as its territory.  Since it has also been seen bringing its cubs round to salivate over our pet doves, we felt less than amicable and moved the bird bath which used to help it jump our fence.

 When my Dad met their burglar, however, it turned out to be a very winsome badger.  Dad sounded rather charmed by it.  Perhaps I should see if I can get on the internet and buy them some badger food.  They can keep it in that handy plastic bin.