Hedgehogs in my garden

Or, The Strange Tale of the Goings-On In My Back Garden Last Week.

There I was, sitting quietly indoors the other evening, when I heard a kerfuffle in my back garden. Not exactly an uncommon occurrence, but it seemed to be going on a bit, so, intrigued, I flung open the patio doors, whereupon it all went quiet. 

Taking up a torch, I stepped outside. 

At this point, we have to briefly go back in time: for some reason, my garden is quite a lot lower than my house, enough that I nearly broke my ankle the first time I stepped out, so I built some steps to make it easier.

Over the years, I've tried various styles, and the best seems to be simple decking planks, screwed onto "joists" made of fence posts.

 Here are the current steps - left - being built, about three years ago: yes, I know they look like pallets, but I assure you, they are made from the finest quality decking planks, no expense spared... and once they were painted, they looked fine.

Stepping down, then, I shone the torch out into the garden, and found that there was a rather nice ginger cat, terrorising a rather large hedgehog.

I looked at the cat. He looked at me. I gave him a "it's not edible you know," look. He returned it with a "yes I know that, but I am asserting my dominance over slow-moving critters." stare.

I went for a rather stern "it's my garden, matey, thou shalt not claim dominance here," look, at which he rolled his eyes, sighed, and, clearly thinking "we'll see who owns this garden once you have gone to bed, hur, hur," he stalked off in a lordly manner, his dignity only slightly diminished by having to squeeze inelegantly under the gap in my side fence which I leave for the convenience of hedgehogs and cats who are too lazy to jump over it.

The hedgehog, meanwhile, had gone into Ravenous Bugblatter beast of Traal mode, ie pretending that, if he couldn't see me, then I couldn't see him. Knowing that hedgehogs in this situation will stay perfectly still for a minute or more, I went back indoors, turned off the lights, opened the window, and sneakily watched him from above.

Sure enough, a minute and a half later, he started moving again, and bumbled around outside the window, before heading off for the steps.

I watched, in fascination, to see what he would do: and rather than go round, or up and over (they are quite high steps, for hedgehogs, although their legs are a lot longer than "one" would think, from looking at them) he went straight underneath my decking steps.

Under the steps? Why? Why?

Closing the window, I went back to the patio doors, and looked out - he was visible between the planks (Memo to self: time to repaint them, getting a bit shabby), and he was just standing there.

For a long time. I stood and watched, for minute after minute. (oh no, I can feel a Monty Python sketch approaching...) 

A minute passed.

Another minute passed, followed by another, different, minute.

I waited a minute, while a minute passed swiftly past.

This was it! A minute passed.

Sorry, end of diversion....

There he is, can you see him?  

He'd been there for so long, that I did have a momentary concern that he'd somehow get trapped under there - can hedgehogs reverse, with all those spines? Would he get stuck? Would I have to go outside and lift the steps up to free him? Should I have boxed off the sides of the steps to prevent such disasters?

While I was pondering, I heard more rustling and bumbling sounds, and a second hedgehog appeared from the darkness, apparently quite unconcerned by my torchlight.

The first one didn't seem to be particularly interested in the second one, and continued snuffling about under the steps, moving quite freely in the fairly large gap under the step. I need not have worried about him getting stuck, he seemed perfectly comfortable: and maybe this explains why I find bits of broken snail shell in the gap under the steps, on those rare occasions where I lift them and sweep underneath them....

After a couple more minutes of snuffling,  Hedgehog Number 1 emerged from under the steps, and wandered off across the garden, bumping into Hedgehog Number 2 as he went. And I do mean "bumping into", they literally bumped into each other, then trundled off around my garden, presumably in search of more small edibles.

And that, dear reader, was the story of What Happened in my Back Garden Last Week!

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