by Hugh Warwick
It is not only the number of hedgehogs that is causing her concern, but also their health. ‘I call them “clangers”,’ she explained. ‘They first appeared in 1999. They are hyperactive. They have a different shape, a narrower head. You can tell they are clangers as soon as you see them.’ None of them live to maturity and, despite numerous autopsies, no cause has been found. Alarmingly, she is now seeing up to forty a year.
In fact, Caroline is concerned that the health of wildlife in general is deteriorating. Many birds are arriving in poor shape. ‘I think there is a toxic time bomb out there, just the build-up of all sorts of poisons we are pouring into the environment.’
Though what caused her most remarkable hedgehog, Bandit, to be quite as he was remains a complete mystery. He had a 5-centimetre stripe across his back that was so black and glossy they at first assumed it was paint. But no amount of scrubbing would remove this blemish and the spines grew true – normal colour everywhere else, but rich black on the band.
They kept him in captivity, reasoning that they would be able to look after him better than anyone else, and he was so unusual that he would inevitably attract attention. Untoward interest in her hogs was something that Caroline has had to contend with before. ‘About ten years ago I was approached by someone offering to buy every hedgehog I could lay my hands on for pets. They offered me £200 per hedgehog.’ I had heard rumours, but not met anyone who had actually been on the receiving end of an approach. I asked if she had taken it any further, but she had just dismissed it out of hand.
She is not alone in being approached. An exotic pet dealer from Calgary, Canada, went to a great deal of trouble in his attempt to secure breeding stock, even managing to obtain an import permit.
Caroline has had no further attempts to obtain our hedgehogs for the pet trade, but there has been a boom over the Atlantic in keeping pygmy hedgehogs. Has Caroline seen any evidence of that in the UK? ‘I’ve never met a pygmy hedgehog, but I have seen adverts for them for sale and often get people calling me up to see if I have any I can spare as pets. They get short shrift. I do not believe that hedgehogs should be kept as pets.’
But attitudes do change. And while it might seem odd, repugnant even, to keep hedgehogs as pets, it would not be the first time that there has been such a dramatic change in our relationship with them. I believe there is a point in history about which all this turns. The year 1905 is perhaps the most significant in hedgehog history. That was when hedgehogs went from portent to paragon.
Prior to that momentous date attitudes towards hedgehogs were dictated by their love of the dark and their secretive behaviour. They were very much creatures of the wild.
As far back as the Bible, hedgehogs are associated with the wilderness that haunts the remnants of Nineveh – the city destroyed by God in judgement for their pride (or by the Babylonians as they helped end the Assyrian empire). Though there is a slight problem with this – which calls into question much of the content of the Bible. Hedgehogs only appear in some translations. In others the word is given as porcupine or, worse still, bittern. Now, at a push I can see the confusion between a spiny rodent and a spiny insectivore – but a heron? Given this dramatic confusion, what else might be amiss?
Early hedgehog references from the UK echo some of the other fairy tales that were perpetuated as fact. Pliny the Elder, repeating and embellishing Aristotle, claimed that hedgehogs were blessed with great weather-predicting capabilities. Very easy really – as long as you find a hedgehog that has made an underground home with more than one entrance. Then just watch to see which hole gets blocked and you can learn where the weather is coming from. This has been extrapolated into Groundhog Day – possibly – as some persist in the fiction that 2 February is actually the ancient festival of Hedgehog Day.
And then there are the fruit-collecting habits. The Aberdeen Bestiary from around AD 1200 recreates this with a detailed image that, when you give it any thought, is obviously absurd. How could hedgehogs collect fruit on their spines?
I suppose you can imagine someone seeing hedgehogs snuffling around rotting apples in the autumn, as this will be where a host of slugs and insects collect, so perhaps this could be confused with an attempt to eat the fruit, and hedgehogs will eat a little fruit. And there must have been considerable mystery surrounding an animal that did not emerge to eat for many months. Surely it must have a stock of food stored away to tide it through the rigours of winter? Well, it does, as we all know, though not in the form of a well-stocked pantry, but with a subcutaneous larder – layers of fat under the skin.
If, just if, a hedgehog was to go about gathering fruit, how would it do that? Well, it does collect vegetation, dragging it into the day nest or hibernaculum, not on its spines but with its mouth. And you need to think a bit about a hedgehog collecting fruit on its spines – there are problems. How easy would it be for a hedgehog to roll up and then propel itself into some fruit? Not very. The rationalist might argue that this was a chance encounter between falling fruit and a slug-eating hog, oblivious at the foot of a tree. But again – no. For the fruit to become impaled there must be some erect spines. But a happy hedgehog, halfway through a slug, is not going to have a care in the world, while the silent approach of the apple is hardly going to generate an erection of prickles. And a hedgehog would have difficulty walking in such a state.
Where was I? Early imaginings of hedgehogs.
It is inevitable that an animal as secretive and night-loving as the hedgehog is going to attract the attention of the myth-creator. While they have not become the bogey-beast of nightmares, they have proved their power as portent.
The bad luck that emanates from a nocturnal hedgehog encounter was recounted in the Folk-Lore Journal in 1889. A Mr Macpherson, from near the River Spey, passed this local superstition to the journal:
I was returning home about midnight, and, when on the bridge crossing the Tulchan Burn at Straan, met a hedgehog. Next day, I, in jest, asked some of the older people if there was any superstition connected with such a meeting. They told me it was unlucky, and seemed to predict some calamity to myself. Two nights after a girl was drowned in the Spey, not far from the scene of my meeting with the hedgehog.
The entry goes on to reveal that the hedgehog and the drowning of the girl were connected, and no amount of arguing could drive the idea from the minds of the people who believed the girl went in the place of the person that met the animal.
Hedgehogs were also considered wise. The 1872 publication Zoological Mythology describes how:
The Arabs are accustomed to say that the champion of truth must have the courage of the cock, the scrutiny of the hen, the heart of the lion, the rush of the wild boar, the cunning of the fox, the prudence of the hedgehog, the swiftness of the wolf, the resignation of the dog, and the complexion of the naguir.
Do snakes have good complexions? I wonder what they use?
And not just wisdom. They ooze health-giving properties, sometimes literally, with the Gypsy traditions of using smoke from burning the spines of a hedgehog as a cold cure, and Hungarian Gypsies also used the ash from burnt spines to help heal wounds. Hedgehog fat and sometimes urine were smeared on as a cure for rheumatism.
And as for toothache, a farmer was reported in 1915 as having complete faith in the power of the hedgehog. When troubled, he took the jawbone of a hedgehog, wrapped in fine cloth, and kept it in his waistcoat pocket, on the side of the painful tooth, and would never be parted from it, as the pain never returned following the intervention of the hedgehog.
Perhaps more worryingly, in these relatively enlightened times, is the story from a website that may or may not be reputable – but that is beside the point, as the contents are worth repeating even if a complete hoax. Apparently a thirty-five-year-old Serbian man needed emergency surgery after he tried to have sex with a hedgehog on the advice of a witchdoctor who claimed it would cure premature ejaculation. The animal was unhurt and the hospital managed to repair the man’s damaged org
an.
OK, stop thinking about the last example for a minute and let me tell you that I have found a way in which hedgehogs do help cure people. As I have gradually met more people who care for hedgehogs I have grown to believe that there are some who are gaining as much from the hedgehogs as the hedgehogs are gaining from them, if not more.
Janis Dean’s hedgehog hospital is hidden away in the very neat suburbs of Poulton-le-Fylde, Lancashire. She likes it that way and is not keen on too much attention. It is as far removed from St Tigs or Vale as you could imagine. This is her home, not some hospital. And she is only interested in hedgehogs. And her dog is much more friendly.
Janis’s front room is stuffed with hedgehogabilia. Every possible hedgehogable item is hedgehogged. It made me realize that I was missing out on so much – tea towels, keyrings, paperweights, cards, warning signs, earrings and much (too) much more. For two weeks of the year she has use of a charity shop in Blackpool, but that means much of the rest of the year her home becomes a warehouse. One day, she hopes, all this stuff will find its way into a new shed and she will begin to reclaim at least part of her life.
That is not going to happen any time soon, as she is always in demand, usually for European hedgehogs. But a few days before I arrived in September 2007, Janis had a visit from one of the singers down on Blackpool Pier. The singer had been given a gift by an adoring fan, one that she did not know how to deal with. The gift, a pet hedgehog, sat in a cage on the bar in her club for a couple of weeks while she pondered what to do, before finding out about Janis.
‘He is ever so grumpy,’ Janis warned me as we went through the house to the converted shed. Her hedgehog hospital was so ordered, clean and clutter-free. ‘This is such a relief, having a separate place for the hogs,’ she said. Until she had it built everything was done at the kitchen sink, cleaning out wounds, picking off maggots. The hospital was built thanks to the generosity of businesses in the area. She had written to everyone she could think of. MFI donated worktops, a local tiling company did the floor and a roofing company the roof. ‘There was only one local company that did not want to help, but he went bust soon after.’
The rows of cages in this self-contained unit were purpose-made. She had done a rare piece on the local radio station and got a call from some solicitors who had heard it and were executors of a will. They just asked her what she wanted. And what she wanted was cages.
‘I think I went a bit over the top,’ she said. ‘You could keep a rhino in those, they are so strong.’
She was right about the hedgehog; what a grump – small, blond and filled with indignation for the entire human race. A couple of weeks on the bar in a nightclub must not have helped the mood of this African pygmy hedgehog and he required gloves to be handled, even by Janis.
It was hard to imagine that this species has caused such a stir in America, where they are the pet of choice. I have seen the websites that praise their petability to the heights, but I just can’t see it. This little beast was not going to make anyone a good pet. Smaller, very definitely not ‘one of ours’, as it had longer ears and was so blond that, if it were not for the dark eyes, it could easily be mistaken for an albino.
Janis seems an unlikely hedgehog carer. ‘I really don’t know how it started. I had no interest in wildlife, didn’t really like animals,’ she explained. But there was a sequence of events that gave things an inevitability.
It began in 1990. Overworked at the civil service, faced with a job move and promotion while living with her son at her mother’s and working in a petrol station at night to try to get enough money together to buy a house, ‘everything went “boom” and I’ve never been the same again. The doctor told me to go home and watch the grass grow. I did.’
And as she watched the grass, she began to notice droppings, hedgehog droppings. These are distinctive: frequently quite shiny as a result of the exoskeletons of the insects they munch up passing through their gut, they usually have one end quite blunt and the other more pointed. Not much more than a couple of centimetres long, they will often be the first indication you get of a spiky resident.
There can be a bizarre fascination with hedgehog poo. I was at a friend’s party recently when I noticed some on the patio. I went in to tell them and they wanted to see, so I led them out and explained why this was hedgehog poo. Word spread and I then spent the next half an hour accompanying at least ten other people and giving a series of impromptu lectures on the digestive system of the hedgehog.
Janis extended her grass-watching to the night in an attempt to see the defecators, and this is when she noticed that the hedgehogs were coming into her garden through a hole in her neighbour’s fence. A short time later he started to replace the old fence and refused to leave a gap for Janis’s nightly visitors. This sparked an interest that was to draw her out of her depression, and when she found a baby hedgehog late one autumn, her path to recovery was set out before her.
She did everything you are supposed to, kept it warm and well fed, bought a heat pad and transformed a rabbit hutch into a hedgehog home. By spring the hedgehog was fat and healthy and ready for release. Very quickly the word got out that there was a hedgehog lady on the block and she has not had a moment’s peace since.
For Janis the relationship is reciprocal. ‘Initially the hedgehogs helped me. I couldn’t go out and didn’t want to see anyone, and they have helped me get over that,’ she said quietly. ‘If I didn’t have this I don’t know what I would do. I can’t hold a job down. I don’t like . . . I just don’t like people. I haven’t had good experiences with people.’
There is a deep sadness within Janis; she is a remarkable woman, working so hard. ‘Everything I’d done previously I’d dabble at and then get fed up. But this is it. This is what I want to do.’
I asked her about the appeal of hedgehogs. She paused and then said, ‘Well, it’s the whole package: how they look, how they behave, how they tolerate so much pain, how they let you care for them. I am sure they know I am trying to help. They just don’t do any harm. They just get on with doing good, out of sight.’ Rather like Janis, I feel.
There are those who might consider Janis extreme. She is not. On a scale of hedgehog carers, she would barely register when seen next to Barbara Roberts.
Her 1930s end-of-terrace house in the Manchester suburb of Withington, south of the centre, gives nothing away. In fact I cycled right past the first time.
Retracing my steps, I noticed a discreet sign identifying the home of Withington Hedgehog Care and a large cuddly hog, but there was still no real indication of what to expect. I was a bit disappointed, for I was expecting something rather more dramatic. The stories I had heard left me imagining that the property would be mired in the smell of hedgehogs. I had imagined that it would be down a forgotten lane and that there would be a pack of feral dogs patrolling the perimeter. I pictured mud and chaos and mess.
I followed the noise of busy-ness. And there was Barbara, opening tins of dog food, chatting to the hedgehogs in the rows of cages stacked behind her in one of three small garden sheds. She was slow on her feet – there was a walking stick nearby – but she was constantly moving, cleaning out food bowls, filling food bowls and talking to her charges. The shed had pet carriers stacked from floor to ceiling. This was not a busy time, she told me. ‘You should have been here earlier in the year. I’ve only got about 200 hedgehogs here now.’ Over winter she had peaked at 463 hedgehogs in these three sheds and throughout her very ordinary home. I started counting the cages – yes, there were enough to accommodate this number. For once it looked like the reports of hedgehog numbers were about right.
She stopped and offered to make some tea. I winced quietly, as she seemed to have little concern for her own well-being. Maybe she did wash her hands in between cleaning the bowls of old food and new faeces, but I didn’t see her do it. Luckily some of the biscuits she offered were individually wrapped.
Barbara’s life has been besieged by sadness and ill health
, but she has found solace in hedgehogs, and thousands of hedgehogs have found solace in her. She has a nurturing zeal that has taken her through a demanding career in nursing while also caring for her parents at home. But it is her earlier experience with abuse and breakdown that seems to lie at the heart of this transference of care from humans to animals.
The more we talk about why she is so fascinated with hedgehogs, the closer to tears she gets. There is something very painful in her life that might have destroyed a less resilient person, or at least forced them to turn in on themselves.
‘I just can’t bear to see an animal in pain,’ she said as we returned to the task of cleaning and feeding. ‘So the first thing I do with any sick hedgehog is to make it as comfortable as possible.’
Barbara has an impressive arsenal of drugs and equipment. There is a cabinet of stainless-steel implements and packets of disposable syringes; in fact, the room looks like a mini operating theatre.
Over the years hedgehog carers have developed techniques for dealing with sickness and injury. Medicines for other animals have been tried on hedgehogs and treatments that work spread around the informal network. While there might be some disputes about style between carers, they do seem to be willing to share ideas of what will and will not work. For example, the painkiller Metacam is supposed to be used on dogs. With hedgehogs it is just a matter of giving a dose proportional to the weight of the patient.
Is there any testing done? ‘Well, I try everything before I give it to the hedgehogs,’ Barbara says in a matter-of-fact tone. I express a little surprise, but she continues as if there could be nothing more normal. ‘Well, Metacam tastes really quite nice, but they hate one of the antibiotics and I can see why. You know the rehydration mix for animals is frightfully expensive, so I just use human ones. The hedgehogs cannot get enough of the lemon and lime, but hate the blackcurrant.’