Before I get back to describing my wonderful (?) holiday in SouthWest Scotland, I must tell you about our midnight visitor.
Everywhere you look on the Internet, you can find articles on Hedgehogs: How to spot them, feed them, care for them, preserve them (pickled in vinegar!), people bemoaning their scarcity etc. etc.
We don’t have any of those problems. What we have are … hedgehogs. Every year, they turn up in our garden. Then the dog finds them, and wants to play with them. We try to separate the two, but the dog is incredibly possessive when it comes to hedgehogs.
The result is a half-hour pantomime in the dark. With gloves, torch and bucket, and a growling dog that does NOT want to part from his New Best Friend! Human beings do not have enough hands for the task, so it is a man and wife job. I need gloves to grab the hedgehog, but the dog manages fine with his mouth. Nary a scratch. I get smacked in the nose (twice – it still hurts), and the wife is trying to get the lead on the dog.
Eventually, the hedgehog is in the bucket, the dog is howling with the loss of his prickly toy, and yours truly transports the hedgehog to his new home in the countryside.
Chances are, he’ll be back in a day or two.
I think that I prefer snakes!