Reply With QuoteLove 'em! Don't see them often in our garden though. I've been trying to adopt some rescue ones...
You've got to love them. I think we've got two families and 3-4 Autumn Juveniles which I'm busy feeding up.
A quickly snatched pic of one earlier, I don't like to disturb them too much.
Anyone else a fan?
Love 'em! Don't see them often in our garden though. I've been trying to adopt some rescue ones...
We used to have a little family that visited us for years.Lovely creatures.
Prehistoric Beasts
"Bite my shiny metal ass."
- Bender Bending Rodríguez
I like them - they just make me happy.
Smashing creatures and a very handy addition to your garden.
Found one snuffling about in our kitchen a few years ago, I think it was looking for somewhere to bed down for winter. Cute things but often covered in fleas and ticks.
I used to see them often when I was a kid living in a town. I now live in a much more rural location but never see them. I guess their numbers have dropped significantly in the last 30 or so years
I love them, last year one was crossing my road while a car was coming- so i stepped in to the road to warn the driver
anyway this made the hedgehog stop and roll in to a ball!!!
so i was forced to pick him up and carry him across the road!!
We have a family (I think) that visit our garden. Mrs a pits out hedgehog food for them. We also have two hedgehog houses in the garden. Both are used. Note - if you have one do not disturb them now. You need to leave them until late spring then give them a clean. The recent frost will ensure the hedgehogs are making nests for the winter already.
I joined the Hedgehog Preservation Society last year and they report numbers are up quite a bit of late. Also, I asked them about the fleas because of our dogs but they're hedgehog specific and don't migrate to other animals.Originally Posted by Gurmot
I used to see them often when I was a kid living in a town. I now live in a much more rural location but never see them. I guess their numbers have dropped significantly in the last 30 or so years
i think they are great, we have a fair few hedge hog visitors to our garden. They had babies under our shed this year and one is nesting under some leafs in our bank. I went bought some wood last weekend and made a hedge hog house with the kids. Wife thinks it already has someone who has moved in.
:)
Lovely !
I remember when I was a little boy we were driving down a single track country lane in a friends Ford Anglia & a mum hedgehog was crossing the road with her babies. The elderly gentleman driving stopped the car thus blocking the road (much to the annoyance of the cars behind !) & smoked a cigarette until they had crossed. I always remember his comment concerning the cars which were blowing their horns behind us of "they can go over the top if they want !"
Fabulous creatures, always a treat to see them.
Dave
Without wishing to lower the tone, have you heard them mating!! I used to sit in our dining room working in the evenings in summer with the french windows open and one evening I heard the weirdest noises, a sort of huffing and snuffling and then scraping sounds. Quietly went to the windows and in the herb beds in the paving were a pair of hedgehogs circling round and round each other with one of them making these explosive sniffing sounds. Looking it up on the 'net later it turns out to be the male who makes the noise as he attempts to persuade the female to allow him to get behind her and for her to lay her spines down so that he can mount. If she isn't keen she just keeps turning away and he keeps circling around, well this pair went on for over an hour without her giving in until I finally shut the windows and went to bed, in the morning there was no sign apart from a lot of flattened Marjoram!
Here's one we fed up for the winter a few years ago, they love cat food.
Eddie
Whole chunks of my life come under the heading "it seemed like a good idea at the time".
My brother went through a stage of trying and eating more and more unusual meat. Pheasant, grouse, pigeon, rabbit, duck, venison, even hare were common place. Then there was the exotic - croc, roo, emu etc.
I have to say, I joined in and tried squirrel (gamey, not unpleasant but a bugger to get the strip the skin off) and butchering two road kill Muntjac.
This escalated, as you've no doubt guessed, to him cooking a hedgehog, baked in mud on a camp fire. Where he found a recently deceased, fit for consumption, non pancaked hog (he wouldn't have killed one) I don't know.
Anyway, there it was cooked, ready to eat, and......he couldn't go through with it.
A case of a hog to far me thinks
My Staffy puppy is terrified of them!! We have a regular in our garden who truly rules the roost; more so now the cat is gone.
What lovely stories. I'm really impressed at the effort some of you are putting in (e.g. building your own hedgehog hut). Nice photos too.
We have at least one dinosaur-sized hedgehog in our garden. Indeed, living under the hedge. I always make sure that every autumn there are lots of leafs under the hedge for him/her/them to hibernate. I love these animals: they eat snails and that way my hostas in the garden are protected.
Menno
We had one last winter. came very morning and evening to eat the cats food. Our cat (a 6 kilo beast) was so scared of him, the hedgehog eventually just nudged him out of the way and took his sweet time with the bowl of cat foot while he just looked on.
Kids absolutely loved it, we built a house for him that we still have. Now that it's cold again the girls have been asking but he's not been back :(
Posting Permissions
