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SQUEEEEEE!

squee

Baby hedgehog. BABY HEDGEHOG!

For once, not from my kitchen. I saw it bumbling past in the drive and realized it was a little ‘un. And so, of course, I had to run out there and pick it up and scare it out of a year’s growth.

I tried to pick it up without gloves at first — holy cow, those spines are really sharp! It’s a little hard to tell scale here, but this one is about half the size of the adult we’ve been seeing — assuming it’s just the one adult.

Wikipedia tells me pregnancies peak between May and July and gestation is 31 to 35 days. So about right.

Ohmygod LOOK AT THAT LITTLE NOSE!

Comments


Comment from S. Weasel
Time: July 18, 2017, 10:32 pm

I’ve either seen three of them tonight, or the same one three times. Plus either two adults, or the same adult twice. It’s hedgehog central tonight!

It’s a wild night tonight. There are storms in the Channel, but it’s just warm and windy here. It feels full of possibilities.


Comment from Uncle Al
Time: July 19, 2017, 12:12 am

Mme. Ermine, have you considered setting up a Sweasel-Badger Manor wildlife webcam? It would be much better than most of the current television/youtube fare!


Comment from Ric Fan
Time: July 19, 2017, 12:45 am

I read somewhere that they encouraged people to build little shelters for them. However, I wd be afraid it would be a deathtrap. Who are hedgehogs natural enemy? Foxes? Dogs? Cats?


Comment from ExpressoBold
Time: July 19, 2017, 1:12 am

“Inconceivable!”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedgehog#Predators

Hedgehog bones have been found in the pellets of the European eagle owl.[13]
In Britain, the main predator is the badger. Hedgehogs in the UK have demonstrably[14] lower populations in areas where badgers are numerous, so that British hedgehog rescue societies will not release hedgehogs into known badger territories.[15]


Comment from Clifford Skridlow
Time: July 19, 2017, 3:59 am

Dinsdale!


Comment from SCOTTtheBADGER
Time: July 19, 2017, 7:18 am

I was in a local bookstore, and found a book on hedgehogs as pets, many years ago. I well remember the part about breeding them, where the book said that the “male carefully mounts the female”. Yes, I bet he does.


Comment from Uncle Badger
Time: July 19, 2017, 10:14 am

I’m afraid ExpressoBold has it. The hedgehog’s only natural predator in the UK is (koff… mumble mumble…begins with a ‘B’…)

However, most of the poor little blighters die under the wheels of cars, they say. Indeed, when I was a kid and there were far more hedgehogs around than there are today, they used to be the staple fare of every cartoonist trying to hack a living – hedgehogs and desert island castaways were in just about every cartoon that didn’t involve mothers in law.

I’ve never been convinced that cars really caused the steep decline in their numbers, though (nor did my relatives). Populations naturally wax and wane and hippies are always waiting to pounce on a convenient ‘explanation’. Yes, there are many more cars today but the sudden drop after he 1970s was just too sudden to be due to cars alone.

Anyway, our visitors are he cutest little things you’ve ever seen and they’ll be assured of a regular supply of food here.

And no. They give me wind.


Comment from Davem123
Time: July 19, 2017, 10:55 am

Well, Stoaty did say it was warm and windy at your place.


Comment from Some Vegetable
Time: July 19, 2017, 2:22 pm

I would love to have a hedgehog in our garden. However, unless you could fit them with little cowboy hats it would probably be too hot for them in Texas.


Comment from Ric Fan
Time: July 19, 2017, 3:16 pm

“Comment from Davem123
Time: July 19, 2017, 10:55 am
Well, Stoaty did say it was warm and windy at your place.”

Right and “full of possibilities.” Who knew that those possibilities were baked, grilled, or sauteed? Baby hedgehog – tastes like veal?

I can see why this guy is popular:
https://twitter.com/Jacob_Rees_Mogg/status/887610864454520832


Comment from durnedyankee
Time: July 19, 2017, 4:56 pm

@Some vegetable – yes, too hot for hedgehogs, not hot enough for alligator pears (avocados)! here right next to Dallas.

I could have sworn Kipling did a story about tortoises and hedgehogs – and so he did!
And it tells, oh best beloveds, how there came to be Armadillos!
Which is the state road-kill of Texas!

(From the Beginning of the Armadillos – Just so Stories by Rudyard Kipling)
“Son, son!’ said Mother Jaguar ever so many times, graciously waving her tail, ‘a Hedgehog is a Hedgehog, and can’t be anything but a Hedgehog; and a Tortoise is a Tortoise, and can never be anything else.’

‘But it isn’t a Hedgehog, and it isn’t a Tortoise. It’s a little bit of both, and I don’t know its proper name.’

‘Nonsense!’ said Mother Jaguar. ‘Everything has its proper name. I should call it “Armadillo” till I found out the real one. And I should leave it alone.’

Back to the hedgehogs.
I’d love to have a few at our place, we back up on a ‘creek’ (that is, a ditch owned by the city and called a ‘green belt’).

Oh wouldn’t that give the coydogs and coyotes (and jaguars….) fits!


Comment from ExpressoBold
Time: July 19, 2017, 4:56 pm

@Comment from Ric Fan
Time: July 19, 2017, 3:16 pm
~
Hilarious.. and I didn’t have to be there!
~
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DFFstF1XkAAWTs2.jpg


Comment from Steve Skubinna
Time: July 19, 2017, 4:57 pm

Some Veg, what’s an armadillo if not an armored hedgehog?


Comment from Drew458
Time: July 24, 2017, 3:05 am

Steve Sku – A mobile speed bump?


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