On Thursday morning I came across a poor hedgehog that had somehow managed to crawl into my wire netted cages, that were protecting my peas from the birds. I am really not sure how he managed to get in there, as there is wire all the way around, he must have squeezed into the smallest hole.
When I found it, the poor little thing was breathing, but it wasn’t doing a lot else. I called my friend Judy, (one of my allotment neighbours) and we decided to give it a drink in case it was dehydrated. Judy picked it up and put it next to some water that I fetched, but the poor thing still didn’t move. It didn’t even try and curl up.
We checked it over and we thought that maybe one of its legs was hurt, so we put the hedgehog in a tub with newspaper. Judy rang her husband who then rang their local vet, who agreed to check the hedgehog over. Judy’s husband then very kindly came and took the hedgehog to the vet.
Unfortunately after checking the hedgehog over, the vet said that as his leg was badly hurt and it was extremly cold and dehydrated, he decided that the kindest thing to do was to put the animal to sleep.
I am really upset that the animal may have hurt it’s leg somehow on my wire cage, though I just don’t know how it could have done this. I have now made sure there are absolutely no holes under, or in-between the cages, in the hope that this doesn’t happen again.
