When I went to let the dogs out last night for a quick pee before bed they went mad. This isn’t normal, usually they get restless just before 10.00 pm which is their bed time, they run out into their bit of the garden, do their thing and come straight back in and put themselves to bed.
I went to have a look at what was causing the furore expecting cats or at a push bats. Normally we have loads of bats flying about by now but the rain and cold weather seems to have kept the insect population down and the bats are not as prolific as in past years. We have some cuckoos at the bottom of the garden and they set the dogs off too but not at that time of night.
I almost stepped on the cause of the mayhem – a hedgehog!
These normally shy creatures aren’t often seen here, there’s loads of camouflage for them, hedges, piles of wood, old tree trunks and such like and they keep themselves to themselves. This one was in the chicken pen of all places.
We carefully picked it up and put it under the hedge to try to keep it safe as it looked a bit unwell and it was raining. Hedgehogs don’t have many predators – in fact none that I know of as their prickles are enough to fend off would be attackers – even ‘Enry Cooper the cat, who thought about it but changed his mind.
This morning when I got up the hedgehog was mooching about in the grass near the dogs garden – this will mean a day of Bruno trying to “talk” to it. Bruno’s a very curious dog, he likes to investigate everything, he’s not aggressive though he does look it but he is interested in anything new, strange or that moves!
It definitely is a strange looking animal. I was surprised to read that there are no hedgehogs in Australia or America, and apparently they have hardly changed in 15 million years.
I’ve given the hedgehog some snails – I’ve certainly got plenty to spare with this rain and it’s been moving about and sniffing and making little snuffling noises but it hasn’t moved far. I was able to get some really close up photos of it – in fact when I lay down in the grass to get a nice one of it’s face it came waddling towards me and would have climbed on my hands if I’d let it.
Hope you enjoy the photos of this lovely creature.
A bientôt
Janine
