April 2014 News

 

Well what a strange year it has been so far. The hedgehogs have just kept coming in, and they are nearly all youngsters, last years hoglets, or Autumn Juveniles. As someone pointed out, if we had had a normal Winter, these 250 gram plus youngsters wouldn’t have survived.

 

There is no argument anymore, our hedgehogs are now facing extinction. Some people have said in the past that this was an exaggeration, but now its official.

 

Is it twenty million, or thirty million years they have been on this earth and we, as humans can wipe them out in three decades. Anyway, myself and many others are trying to change that course of events, I just hope we can succeed.

 

I do my best by trying to educate the children as well as the adults by giving talks on how we can all help. Sometimes I think I'm banging my head against a brick wall when, as two nights ago I was picking a young hog up from a young lady's garden, she told me that it had been out everyday for a week, playing on the lawn! For all my effort, after two days it died. Ive come to the conclusion that there are two kinds of humans, the ones who see the great out doors, and those who only see that little (sorry, big, or very big) box in the corner of their living room and nothing else is of any interest to them. I don't think we will ever get through to this latter group.

 

Last February I was honoured when I was asked to join up with Jane Rock, Bat Rescue, and Derek Crawley, Dormice, for an evening at The headquarters of the Wildlife Trust at Wolseley.

 

We all gave a Powerpoint talk on our particular subject (I took Cellie along, of course, and as usual he was a sure fire hit with the public )and the evening went well, at least it seemed to by the audiences response. A new member of my team, Alison, came along to help and boy has she helped since! I've really struck lucky with another two new helpers as well, Peggy and Maurice.

 

You see, I need helpers who are specialists in their own field and who can put up with not only my "I want it done yesterday" attitude, but also my total lack of patience. (I can see everyone nodding their heads now.)

 

Going back to the new members, Ali is a trained veterinary nurse,and so understands the hedgehogs and how to handle them. Peggy is a born organiser and both her hubby Maurice, and her son Ben, are genius's with computers. This latter attribute is gold dust to me as a woman who has to be told how to switch the damn thing on, and that's even before we get any further. In fact Ben has built this new website, ("No problem" he said casually!)

 

So, I reckon that between us all, we are now ready to face a new year, Diane, Alex, Ali,Leigh, Charlotte,Peggy, Maurice, Ben and myself, not to mention probably the most important man of all, Craig, my wonderful vet, because as Ive said before, I could'nt do this work without him. What other vet would tolerate me turning up not only five days of a week, often out of hours, and on a Saturday and eight o'clock on a Sunday morning once, but, I even went THREE times in one day last Autumn with sick hogs and for all his banter,insults and leg pulling, he just got on with treating my patients.

 

Thank you Craig and your team, and thank you all of MY team, now lets get on with the job of rescuing hedgehogs.

 

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