the endless charm of spike the hedgehog
Spike came under my watchful eye on the 20th November, 2016. This gave me a further opportunity to expand my observations and knowledge on his mode of life. Spike was not the first hedgehog I had reared over the years.
It came to my attention that the spikes that nature had endowed him were not only an excellent protection against attack from other animals but also act as a very efficient and effective counter to shock if they should tumble and fall. Their spiny coat makes an excellent suit of armour but it also makes it very difficult for them to clean their skin. They have many parasites which hideaway in the forest of spines. They suffer constant irritation from fleas, tics and fungal spores. Hedgehogs have many enemies. Their principal enemy used to be the badger; today sadly it’s the developer through loss of important habitats and the many motor vehicles using our roads who must claim responsibility for their ongoing and drastic decline.
It is a well known fact that hedgehogs used to frequent the fields where cows lay at night, and long thought that they suckled the sleeping cows to steal their milk. We now know that hedgehogs suffer from lactose intolerance, so that put paid to that old myth. They would forage around the cows so as not to startle them, then lean in rubbing their spiny bodies against them until they stood up to avoid this painful irritation. They would then gobble up the many grubs and insects attracted to the surface of the ground by the heat from the cows’ body... a more likely reason for this behaviour than the milk theory.
When winter frosts arrive their natural food supply disappears. Worms go deep underground, insects die or hide away and diapause. Hedgehogs cannot migrate to warmer climes like insect eating birds, so they do the only possible thing if they are to survive the winter; they doze away the cold uncomfortable months in profound slumber. Hedgehogs will raise two families, one in spring and another in summer. Those from the second family may be rather small when winter takes hold. Spike became one of those casualties.
On that cold night in November, just getting into bed, I spotted him on the grass verge, tiny and looking for food, he was dangerously near to the main road. I went out into the night and brought him in to the warmth and safety of the house. I prepared a warm and cosy bed from a shoe box cutting a hole in the box to fashion a door, I gave him an emergency meal of cat food and fresh water and let him have his fill. I quickly checked him over for fleas and tics and was horrified to find tics all around his face and abdomen. I began the long arduous task of removing them turning each one three times in an anticlockwise direction until their mouth parts released from Spike’s tiny body. Two hours and 28 tics later Spike and I finally got to sleep; it was now 1.30 in the morning.
Over the next few days I removed a further 6 tics from him and began a feeding regime to hopefully keep him healthy, build up his weight and sustain him through till spring. Hedgehogs in captivity can suffer from boredom and depression; they can over eat and with very little exercise will succumb to ill health and die. Hedgehogs in the wild can travel great distances during the night in their quest for food, worms, slugs, beetles and even dead animals form part of their varied diet.
I gave Spike a room of his own to fulfil his exercise needs, a diet of cat food, but not fish, fruit, morsels of cooked meats, dried mealworms, sunflower hearts and a proprietary hedgehog food which I found to my amazement in my local supermarket. I also supplemented his diet with the odd meal of live worms dug from the garden.
With lots of love and attention and good nourishment Spike blossomed into a healthy if not a little chubby adult hedgehog. I liberated him in April the following year. I didn’t see him again for a while. I went out every evening to catch a glimpse of my dear little friend. Had he left the safety of my garden for good?
On the night of the 21st May a stout fellow came waddling forth from the bushes, I rushed in to get him a meal of his favourite food only to see him toddle away through the grass already wet with the dew of the coming night, he was off on another grub hunting expedition, not even stopping to look back.
