After much suspicious activity during daylight hours over the last few weeks and little hoglet sized parcels starting to appear around the garden, we have been eagerly awaiting the first sightings of this year’s offspring, but as yet the cameras have recorded nothing of the miniature prickly balls. With at least five large rampant males patrolling the patio each evening, it probably wouldn’t be the wisest place for any self respecting mother to bring her newborns on a night out, so I can’t really say that I am surprised. However, it looks like one inexperienced mother has been very neglectful of her parental duties, after a young hoglet was found on a neighbour’s patio in the heat of the day. Thankfully there were no obvious injuries, only a few undesirable lodgers, but the youngster was quite lethargic, dehydrated and at 218 grams a bit small to be venturing out on its own without a chaperone. So once again another wayward youngster has had to be admitted to The Rehabilitation Centre for ‘Wild’ Hedgehogs. Despite being full to bursting, they just managed to squeeze her in as long as she didn’t mind sharing a double room with another inmate… And who is this neglectful teenage mother I here you ask?…well it just so happens that she (no name as yet) is the spitting image of Tippy Toe, very dark ears, a dark nose, long legs and an escape artist in training!
Bruno turned up early for his tea last night, so I got my first glimpse of this monster hog during daylight. He looks very different in the flesh, with a very dark face and a light stripe down the centre of his nose, so that given his size he could be mistaken for a badger! It was a real treat watching his nose twisting in all directions trying to work out where this human intruder was located. It was so contorted at one point that I got a great view of his pearly white teeth! Of course, once he had tracked down my position, he was off into the bushes like a shot and despite my best efforts to track his movements he did the usual vanishing trick!
