Apologies SeagullSuzie – didn’t mean to cross post with you 🙁 (What Did You Do For Hedgehog Awareness Week) Speaking nicely to one of the groundworks team in person is brilliant. Maybe you could offer a packet of biscuits as a bribe (sorry – goodwill gesture!) to reinforce the message 🙂
Quick update from me. Too soon for replies but have written to county, district and town councils. We have a very supportive town councillor so as well as the strimmer plea also enlarged on the need for hedgehog highways etc. in our small market town (as everywhere – new housing estates springing up.)
I have also emailed several strimmer manufacturers to suggest ”warning’ stickers. Next step will be to approach local garden centres to ask if they will display posters on notice board.
I don’t do social media but maybe this is another good way to communicate the message instantly in a modern world?
Sorry to finish on a sad note but here is a poem from the old world of over 40 years ago; ‘The Mower’ by Philip Larkin – still relevant, still with the pain of loss; we need the ‘kind’ more than ever now.
The mower stalled, twice; kneeling, I found
A hedgehog jammed up against the blades,
Killed. It had been in the long grass.
I had seen it before, and even fed it, once.
Now I had mauled its unobtrusive world
Unmendably. Burial was no help:
Next morning I got up and it did not.
The first day after a death, the new absence
Is always the same; we should be careful
Of each other, we should be kind
While there is still time.
