4 hours ago
6
Deep into the night, and out of our sight, tiny claws rake over plastic. The animal skitters halfway through a pipe, then stops. A hunter five times its weight is on its tail, but it is safe from harm, and not just because the tunnel is too narrow for the hunter to enter. Curiosity killed the cat’s predatory thoughts with a face full of prickles a long time ago.
The cat sniffs the tube, and wanders off.
Until this summer, we had never laid eyes on our hedgehogs, not once in two years. Moist poos glistening with beetle shells told us they were here. But lawns like crispy seaweed, beds full of papered flowers, and reports of dehydrated waifs made us worried for them. Water baths slaked a thirst, but where were the invertebrates, the crunch of a carapace, a slug smoothie? A reputable website advised us to feed hedgehogs cat food and beetles. We have six cats using our garden as their public convenience – should it be their takeaway too? As for the beetles, if an insectivorous mammal can’t find any, how could we?
At the beginning of August, our car left a DIY store looking equipped for a motorised joust, with a three-metre lance (aka drainpipe) thrust out of the front passenger window. Every night since, dinner has been served in a foil tray, down the pipe, cut to a third of its length but still beyond cat reach. Every morning, the tray is found nudged out the other end, empty.
Our trail camera has captured all this, giving us Somerset’s answer to the snow leopard, live action photos of the otherwise unseen. It has recorded entrances and exits, both to the food pipe and the garden itself, slipping between slats at the front, or slotting through the purpose‑made hog hole in the fence at the back.
And here the comedy ends. We’ll stop this supplementary feeding in time for hibernation, but how will hedgehogs fare next summer and in summers to come? Must we manage the emergency for as long as it takes them to adapt and evolve? Will they?
