Allotments 4 All

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.

That is sad. We have a wildlife hospital not far from us so if I see an injured HH I can take it there. We took one a couple of years ago, it was small & out in the late morning so I screamed at OH to 'Stop the car'. That one died too. I've released a pigeon from some ones pea netting

It is sad..and I've been there too..taking injured 'hoggie' into vets. Sadly allotments are not the safest of the places for poor souls..broken glass, wires, all manner of plastic things to trap or to cause injuries.
The hoggie I found had deep cut on its leg, and even I volunteered to care for 3 legged one permanently and provide safe place to live rest of its life...vet would not amputate the injured leg off as it already had some inflammation set in and it would have spread despite the amputation..so 'kindest job' was done too.

We had one that came out during the day and looked very unwell.  The vet had to put it down as well.  However, this one was huge and apparently very old and had probably eaten something poisonous.

Next door is paranoid about rats (we have never seen any) but he seems to have an unlimited supply of rat poison and uses it. 

It is sad but we haven't seen any hedgehogs in the garden since.  According to Channel 4 news their numbers have gone down so much in recent years, they are now really endangered in the UK.  Their rapid decline was compared to the decline of tigers in the wild (not in the Uk obviously).

Come to think of it - haven't seen a flattened one on the roads recently either  - (thanks GJ)!.  Our friends have a hedgehog family who come and 'share' dog food at night.  Lovely sight.


 

We have 2 HH houses in the garden. I don't know if either is inhabited but we do have HH poo scattered around .The HH houses are sited under a huge fatsia so there are plenty of dead leaves to use. Our youngest had a thing for HH & I inherited it from her . The first sighting of the year of HH poo has me in raptures . I know, I should get out more but I'm happy as I am .

I have a hedgehog doing the rounds it keeps on digging up my potatoes.  I am rather worried about it since it seems to have been digging around all winter. 

I managed to kill a grass snake with netting a few years ago I was gutted.

Quote from: Digeroo on May 12, 2013, 08:35:12
I have a hedgehog doing the rounds it keeps on digging up my potatoes.  I am rather worried about it since it seems to have been digging around all winter. 

I managed to kill a grass snake with netting a few years ago I was gutted.

Had a bad experience with a slow worm in the compost bin. Poor creature had slithered into a netlon mesh bag from the onion sets and got half way through. A particularly difficult extraction attempted with pen knife, only partly successful....

I managed to kill a grass snake with netting a few years ago I was gutted.
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Had a bad experience with a slow worm in the compost bin. Poor creature had slithered into a netlon mesh bag from the onion sets and got half way through. A particularly difficult extraction attempted with pen knife, only partly successful....
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Oh dear, it sounds painful for the poor creatures