Two Wandering Hedgehogs

‘There’s a hedgehog by the road’. ‘Just opposite the house’. They were the shouts from the bedroom immediately before we all went to see what was going on. There—in the middle of the day—was a young but well-grown hedgehog, these days called the West European Hedgehog (Erinaceus europaeus). I kept enough hedgehogs in the 1950s and early 60s to know that a hedgehog out by day is in trouble. There was a great deal of local building and road works during that week and we suspect their shelter had been disturbed. It was in a dangerous position by a road and with only an open small school field and a busy road in the other direction. The house’s chief animal wrangler—not me—donned her gloves and soon had the beast in a container. Hedgehogs if disturbed by day are hungry and so it was offered the few earthworms to be found but a profusion of large slugs from the garden. These it attacked with a great deal of slurping, wiping off slime and chewing with enthusiasm. We are fortunate in having a belt of woodland behind the house, well inhabited by hedgehogs, including in all probability the parents of this one. We released it with even more slugs which again it devoured before trundling off into the undergrowth. No sooner had we done that than another one was spotted in the same spot as the first. It too received a quick meal of slugs and was sent on its way.

With hedgehogs having declined in the UK it was a delight to see that we still have a breeding population. We have picked on a trail camera by night but not in the numbers we had around 20 or 30 years ago. They are relatively long lived and it does take a while for a relict population to die out if breeding ceases.

What surprised us was the lack of external parasites. When we or the long-gone dog encountered hedgehogs decades ago they were crawling with fleas and often had a number of ticks. Four-year old grand-daughter visiting from Hong Kong was thus able to see and stroke a hedgehog for the first time. Which reminds me. I must put the trail camera out to see if we pick them up.

Under the school fence is not a good place for a Hedgehog to be in the middle
of the day

Off into the woods