Tuesday 30 January 2018

hedgehogs, horses and hammocks

Every Monday morning I am in hedgehog heaven.


I have volunteered at The Wiltshire Wild Life Hospital at Newton Tony near Salisbury to be surrounded by 300 hedgehogs one morning a week.  A nurse's uniform is not required but gloves are a necessity. Each adorable hedgehog has his or her own box which every day needs to be cleaned out with fresh paper, a towel, a bowl of gourmet food and a dish of water. 

Some of them are very compliant and keen to get at their new food bowl. Others understandably just roll up in a  ball and fan their prickles out.  If you're adept however you can get your hand in, just before they roll up tight, to enable you to lift them out without two many prickles piercing your gloves and then your skin.  People kindly send in stacks of newspapers as each hedgehog has probably two whole newspapers in his/her box. I try to be selective with the the top page- no pictures of Trump or anything too lurid. The TV Guide is frankly just mean. I think the crossword is probably the best. Today one of them escaped and by the time I had left, which box he'd escaped from hadn't been discovered. I suggested he was named Steve. 
( Mc Queen.The Great Escape.)


I have taken these two pics(the one just above and the one just below) from their website. Marilyn and Mike run the hospital and do a fantastic job. Sometimes Marilyn having to work till 4 in the morning if not enough volunteers turn up. As well as the badger there is a sweet fox (too difficult to photograph) and numerous birds, squirrels, a couple of swans and at the time of writing a wobbly jackdaw. When the fox cubs come in in the Spring I must be careful not to offer to take one home and bottle feed it. All the animals are returned to the wild where possible and a too tame fox cub would not survive. As it is I have to check my pockets before I leave to make sure an adorable hedgehog hasn't climbed in.

Pocket thinks I should be spending my Monday mornings with him and giving him gourmet food but Beezle is more philosophical. As he and Herman Hesse would say "Busyness drains life of its little and enormous joys." He wouldn't mind the nurse's uniform though.

Pixie's prickly very interesting fact is that the collective noun for hedgehogs is an array.


The horses are only on the blog because I haven't written about them for a while. I am still not writing about them but here is a picture of Harry.


and Trude.



And the hammock is just a gentle reminder that Spring and Summer are only round the corner. At the moment we are knee deep in mud - it's like the Somme - and being on a hill we are also in line for the prevailing winds and lashing rain and the thought of swinging in that hammock in the blazing sun is pleasing. Though I am reminded that since I got the hammock I have actually never laid in it let alone swung in it. And now I'm one of an array of  volunteers I'm even less likely to.



The Hedgehog
by
Paul Muldoon



The snail moves like a 
Hovercraft, held up by a 
Rubber cushion of itself, 
Sharing its secret 

With the hedgehog. The hedgehog 
Shares its secret with no one. 
We say, Hedgehog, come out 
Of yourself and we will love you. 

We mean no harm. We want 
Only to listen to what 
You have to say. We want 
Your answers to our questions. 

The hedgehog gives nothing 
Away, keeping itself to itself. 
We wonder what a hedgehog 
Has to hide, why it so distrusts. 

We forget the god 
Under this crown of thorns. 
We forget that never again 

Will a god trust in the world.

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