I've become the local hedgehog rescuer

[Chrissy]

On Thursday of last week we spotted something small moving in the grass service strip next to the road. It was 2pm on a a bright sunny day. On investigating we found it was a baby hedgehog (or a hoglet to give it it's correct name). Very unusual for one to be out on it's own on a hot sunny day next to a road so we searched the nearest bush for a nest and didn't find one. It's a busy enough road and there are many cats around. I picked it up and brought it over to our back garden and installed it in our regular hedgehog feeding box. Then within a short period of time there was another one so we did the same thing with that. They were both very hungry and thirsty and tucked into our hedgehog food. We've had no reasonable rain for over 3 weeks. We weighed both and they were 66 and 67grams. Underweight for babies that looked about four weeks old that could eat and lap well.

A guy from a house nearby said he had seen one further along the road but after searching I didn't find it. We had noticed that our regular hedgehog visitor hadn't been for supper for about 3 weeks so were suspicious that this was the mother and wondered why she wasn't around anywhere.

On Saturday we spotted another baby heading towards the road at about 7pm so we picked up that one too. It looked smaller than the two we had rescued on Thursday.

Today we weighed all three. The latest and smallest one weighs 67grams and the original two weigh 88 and 90grams. So they have been eating very well. The smallest one might be a male and the others might be females but it's difficult to tell at this age especially as they are a bit shy and ball up when I try to look

Today we cleaned out their new hedgehog box and feeding box that my OH now known as Heath Robinson has joined together with a corridor between them. Here's a pic of our new temporary family. They went out on the lawn today for a run around. That was great exercise for all of us!

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