From badgers to hedgehogs. It may be chance, but for 10 years or so these eyes have hardly seen a hedgie at all. Not even a squashed one on the roads. They used to be numerous in the south Dublin suburbs, and plentiful enough out in the woodlands and hedges of eastern Ireland anyway. One of the comforting noises at night for a Rathgar gardener used to be the crunching of snail shells in his vegetable patch, coming from a pair of these animals.
James Fairley, in his Irish Beast Book, tells us that the hedgehog was perhaps introduced to Ireland intentionally, either for food or for a reason that probably no one else has thought of. "The Romans," according to Fairley, "used the spiny coats of the hedgehog for hackling cloth or in wool carding" - so much so that the senate passed a law to regulate their destruction. This would imply that the people in the North had an especial interest in them. Romans ate them, the writer surmises, for Romans were, he says, great gastronomical experimenters.
English writers of rural habits often tell us that "gypsies", or other people of the road, encased them in an inch or two of mud (when dead, of course) and threw them into the fire embers to roast. When fully cooked, you could, apparently, pull out the spines easily. Just let them be. Have a hamburger. Most of them will now be in hibernation. It usually lasts from early October to February and, says our mentor, quoting a British source, if the poor thing doesn't reach a certain weight in autumn, it cannot survive hibernation. So it must "continue to forage against all the odds or perish."
And such is the fate of second litters of young, born late in the year. That is causing some perturbation among animal welfare workers in England. The odd, fluctuating weather has, apparently, disrupted the mammals' breeding cycle. For hedgehogs have been producing second litters and the carers are struggling, according to The Daily Telegraph, with an unprecedented number of "autumn orphans". The English Hedgehog Preservation Society, based on Ludlow, Shropshire (Houseman country), says: "It's a nationwide phenomenon. We have a couple in Rochdale who are looking after 170 babies." God bless the work.
By the way, bread and milk are not good for this species. Pet food with water is better. Usual diet tends to be worms, slugs, beetles, frogs, mice, birds eggs and young birds, say experts.