CHAROITE SIBERIANS

I hate hedgehogs.

Well, I don’t really. Someone sent me an email the other day with some pictures of baby hoglets that were undeniably adorable. Hedgehogs are fairly cute and generally harmless creatures that make gardeners insanely happy by munching on the nasty slimy things that eat their Hostas. People build houses for them, feed them Whiskas, give them flea treatments and generally welcome them with open arms.

Unlike foxes (if you believe the recent hype), they don’t enter our gardens with the intent of causing GBH. Except the one that comes into mine, that one is the embodiment of evil.

Red Spot made a habit of visiting us last summer. The trouble is, his visits usually resulted in husky mayhem. Mostly because he used to trash my chainlink fence to get in and leave nice holes for the dogs to squeeze out of. His visits briefly stopped all evening play sessions in the garden as these usually ended up with me crawling through the fence trying to retrieve some husky or other. The dogs loved Red Spot, in the way that killer whales love baby seals except hedgehogs come a little better armed and come out of dog encounters fairly well. Mine haven’t killed one yet. They have, however, played football with him and Mojo did manage to throw him into a tree which is only one of the places I’ve had to rescue the prickly little sod from.

The hedgehog has been placed in a bucket and carried to safety many times. I started off just taking him into the front drive, convinced he’d learn the error of his ways and decide Siberians don’t make the best playmates. When this didn’t work, I started taking him into the neighbouring fields. At some point last year I decided we either had a plague of hedgehogs or one or two very persistent ones so during one rescue, I marked him with a bit of red paint. Sure enough he came back. And back again.

Red Spot seriously blotted his copy book when he sat outside the dog run one evening last autumn sticking two hedgehog fingers up at the dogs. Tigerlily and Raven got so frustrated that they couldn’t reach him, they decided to have a bitey-scratchy session instead. Raven was left with a lovely hole in her leg and Tiger added it to the list of reasons she doesn’t really like Raven any more.

As a result, Red Spot earned himself a ride in my car to a hedgerow a couple of miles up the road. End of ? Not really, within the week he was back.

He went quiet after that. I know some hedgehogs hibernate and honestly, I was NOT hoping he’d decided to kip in someone’s November 5th Bonfire or been made dish du jour in a gypsy feast. Honestly. I was just relieved to see the back of him.

Dogs have a distinctive bark when they’ve found a hedgehog. It’s a high pitched, excited but slightly unsure sound. Sort of a canine “WTF?” Everyone was in the house last night apart from Dakota and over the sound of Brew and Pyewacket happily worshipping Raven, I heard a familiar Yip from the far end of the garden.

Emergency code amber lock-down kicked in and the dogs were bundled into crates and I went out with a torch and something smelly to lure Kody away from her new best friend before she came in crawling with lice.

Sure enough she was pushing a rolled up hedgehog around the garden with her nose. It was too dark to check for tell tale red paint and it will have probably washed off by now but the nonchalance with which he uncurled and wandered away once Kody had been safely removed made me think this one has been here before.

I couldn’t find the hole in the fence this morning. Tigerlily did. She spent a few minutes running around in the gap between my fence and the school fence behind the property before – being a VERY GOOD LITTLE HUSKY – she came back under when I called her. The garden is temporarily off limits again til I fix the hole after work.

If he comes back tonight, Red Spot is getting a one way trip to the other side of Dodge in the boot of my car.