by Hugh Warwick
Working closely with local vets, carers become adept at diagnoses, and most also become skilled at realizing when they are out of their depth. ‘If there is a need for something like an amputation, I will always go straight to my vet,’ she explained. ‘But I can do so much here.’ Though I do not know how much the vets approve of her unorthodox approach to drug testing.
By now the noise in the shed is remarkable as thirty hedgehogs start eating dog food simultaneously. Then her rather deranged dog kicks off again – this dog was in a cage in her bedroom, for my benefit, as it is a little temperamental around people. A van had pulled up from the local pet shop. I helped carry the stacks of tins into a shed. This is where the money goes. Barbara spends pretty much her entire pension on food for the animals. Now she is a registered charity she does get some money coming in, especially when she needs new equipment, but before she got that status she relied on more unorthodox methods of fund-raising.
I had noticed a photograph of John Thaw, an actor famous for his grumpy Inspector Morse. Expecting it to be indicative of a slight crush, I asked what he was doing on the wall. ‘Oh, he was one of my regular donors,’ Barbara said. ‘I wrote to him when I was having difficulties. I just said, “You have a kind face, could you help?” and I got a letter from him and a cheque. I never met him, but I was thrilled to be invited to his memorial service.’
There was also a letter from Buckingham Palace. Barbara wrote to the Queen when she heard about the plans to cull the hedgehogs on the Uists. ‘I said, “You are the Queen, you can stop this sort of thing,” but I didn’t get a reply.’ Undaunted Barbara phoned the Palace to complain. ‘Well, I didn’t get through to Her Majesty, but I spoke to someone who explained that she is very busy. And I did eventually get a letter.’ Barbara takes in hedgehogs from all over Manchester and sometimes further out into Lancashire. And as she does not drive, she is forced to do all this on public transport.
One afternoon, Barbara had a call from an elderly lady about a sick hedgehog she had found out on her lawn. Barbara told her to take it in and keep it warm, put it in a box with a strong light over it alongside a plastic bottle filled with warm water. Shortly before setting off on the two-hour journey to collect the patient, Barbara phoned just to check it was still alive. Yes, said the old lady, I can see it moving.
On arrival Barbara could not help but notice a strong smell. She looked into the box and was shocked to find a very dead hog. But the lady was so pleased with what she had done, picking up the hog in her husband’s jumper, that Barbara did not have the heart to tell her that the movement was not the hedgehog but a pulsating mass of maggots that had all started getting more active as the temperature increased.
So Barbara picked up the box and said she had to rush back to get it fixed up. There are certain ways to guarantee getting a double seat on public transport. This was one of them.
It is undeniably the case that Barbara is an eccentric person. A wonderfully warm, eccentric person who cares passionately about hedgehogs, and not just hedgehogs. She is quite matter of fact as she tells me how she slept with a blind squirrel every night for three years: ‘Well, he was just so miserable on his own.’
The more time I spent with Barbara the more it became clear that this is not a one-way process. While she is working tirelessly to aid hedgehogs, in their own quiet way the hedgehogs are keeping Barbara alive. Without drama she commented, ‘If it weren’t for the hedgehogs, there would be nothing to get out of bed for in the morning.’ And that was about more than just dealing with lethargy. I really felt that Barbara would not have recovered from cancer, and would not be able to deal with the catalogue of conditions she currently suffers from, without the hedgehogs. This genuinely is a symbiotic relationship. In fact, I would argue that Barbara and perhaps many others have been self-medicating with hedgehogs for years. And they obviously work . . . Perhaps we could get them on the NHS?
We are back at that idea of the relationship between hedgehogs and people being more complicated than it is between us and most other species. We embrace them in literature; we take them to our bosom (not too tightly) and care for them. And they are everywhere. A hedgehog is one of the most recognized of computer-game characters – Sonic. How did they think of that?
The Japanese development team was seeking an original character for a computer game unlike any other. Their first priority was ‘speed’ – they wanted a character that would be exhilarating. So they came up with a rabbit (do you think that Sonic the Rabbit would have worked?), but were then stuck with how a rabbit could attack in an exciting way – they wanted to be able to send the character on a ‘charge’ that would beat an enemy. And what creature could disable the opposition with a fast charge? Why, one covered in spikes. And obviously a porcupine would have just been silly.
Take a step back and have a look for hedgehogs in everyday life. I think you will be surprised at how many there are and where they get to. Beijing zoo’s gift kiosk features two species of cuddly toy – the panda, obviously, and the hedgehog. Why? There are just two in the zoo, hidden away in a darkened corridor, sharing space with a cantankerous flying squirrel.
When did hedgehogs suddenly become the symbol for banking? Two banks have been running hedgehog-related campaigns as I write this book.
Icelandic bank Icesave featured a curled-up hedgehog in its adverts – implying what? That, come the winter, the bank will go to sleep for five months and burn up all the fat you have laid down for it? And why has an Icelandic bank taken the hedgehog to heart? There are no hedgehogs in Iceland.
Fortunately Icesave’s Alan Gilmour was able to help. ‘We liked the image of the hedgehog,’ he explained, ‘because it communicated so well that with our interest-rate guarantee not only were you well protected as with a hedgehog and its quills, but that you could afford to put your interest in your savings money into hibernation knowing that you would still be protected from cuts in interest rates and that your money would still be getting a great return. The imagery also allowed us to do this in a non-clichéd and unbank-like way. In this instance the hedgehog is meant to represent the customer and not the bank.’
Still not quite sure that works for me.
But the real delight has been Abbey. How did they get the hedgehogs to dance so wonderfully on TV? Shame they would not share that with me – they were worried that I might be concerned about the use of animals in advertising. At least my local branch allowed me to take away a couple of the large cardboard hedgehogs that had featured in their window.
There was some, if rather tenuous, logic connecting banks and hogs. But why did the North Face produce a pair of rugged trainers and call them the Hedgehog? I have tried to get them to explain the reasoning, but have not had an answer (or, more importantly, a pair of the shoes – I thought it might be rather cool to go off radio-tracking hedgehogs in Hedgehogs, though to be honest wellies are far more practical). It makes no sense. These are shoes designed for life at breakneck speed, careering down the side of a mountain, charging up another mountain, yet they carry the moniker of a woodland-loving animal that has a top speed of around 4 km/h and prefers to curl up when confronted by anything too challenging – like a mountain, I imagine.
A more appropriate use was for children’s shoes, as I saw in Germany. The upset here was that the range did not extend to adult sizes.
Hedgehogs crop up in all sorts of places. There are the traditional pipe-cleaning tools called hedgehogs – a sort of reamer that scrapes bits of carbon off the bowl. Black & Decker produced a Hedge Hog, a hedge trimmer.
There was a forge that crafted all sorts of amazing blades. I have a billhook, a kind of English machete that I use for splitting kindling, which was born from the ‘Hedgehog Forge’. I noticed it on a market stall – great how your eyes can pick up things at the merest glance – an image of a hedgehog, pressed into the blade. Like scanning text, I can usually find the word hedgehog. The forge was based up in Cannock, Staffordshire, the property of Cornelius Whiteh
ouse, and has produced no end of wonderful blades, particularly, and rather delightfully, for hedge-laying, the now fading art of keeping our landscape truly alive, and keeping hedgehogs happy.
Ironwork is still the domain of some hedgehog-related companies. I was delighted, and a little shocked, to find the Erotic Hedgehog, a company that specializes in the ‘bespoke design of wrought iron’, complete with restraints. I asked Brian Sims, founder and blacksmith of the Erotic Hedgehog, where he got the idea to rope a hedgehog into the promotion of high-end bondage-tinged internal fittings. ‘Well, the Erotic Hedgehog is a very new venture,’ he explained. ‘We did our first Erotica show this year at Earls Court. But we have been blacksmithing for much longer under the hedgehog banner.’
The Happy Hedgehog firought Iron Work is the home of the Erotic Hedgehog. And the Happy Hedgehog goes way back to pre-blacksmith days. ‘I had been planning on writing a children’s story about a hedgehog family living at the bottom of the garden,’ Brian said. ‘But then events took over. I was made redundant, became apprenticed to a blacksmith and then took on the company. It was my kids’ idea to rename it after the central character in my stories – the Happy Hedgehog.’
And what wise kids. He has had work commissioned simply on the strength of the name alone and even had a call from a professor of business studies to say that it was possibly the best name for a business he had ever come across.
But it was not just his children. ‘I suppose it goes back to my childhood,’ Brian said. ‘I remember that we rescued a little one and looked after it in our garden. I used to rush home from school at the end of the day to check it was OK.’ So hedgehogs have become wedged into his psyche and, like so many other people, he has difficulty on putting his finger on the attraction: smelly, flea-ridden, solitary, prickly and nocturnal, they are hardly the recipe for unrestrained, or even restrained, love.
Relying on your children for a company name is not something unique to Brian Sims. The Heavenly Hedgehog Ice Cream Company, from Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, is quite honest about the origins of the name. In fact, their website has a list of answers to frequently asked questions. So the answer to the very first question is, ‘It’s what happens when you let your children name your store.’ I am not sure what the question to answer number six is, though: ‘No, there isn’t a bed in the back of the store.’ Perhaps they just have some very tired customers.
The award for the most inappropriate use of a hedgehog in advertising, however, must go to Ford – advertising a car through a cute little hedgehog wanting a ride is just so very wrong on so very many levels.
The Department of Transport picked up on a more positive use of the hedgehog. The Green Cross Code is no longer mediated by Darth Vader – the actor who played the part of the Green Cross Code Man, dressed in a superhero outfit, was best known for his portrayal of Luke Skywalker’s father (and if you have not seen Star Wars movies, sorry for giving away the denouement). No, in 1997 they moved to the far more charismatic hedgehog.
Quite a good arrangement, this. Hedgehogs teach our children to look right, left and then right again, and in return there is a wonderful network of carers to take in and patch up those hedgehogs that fail to heed their own advice.
I have visited carers from the south of England to Scotland and have met some of the most incredible characters along the way. What I am not sure is whether the act of caring for animals in general, and hedgehogs in particular, generates the sorts of person I have met, or whether the sorts of people I have met are the only ones who would become involved.
Take Elaine Drewrey, for example. I had heard her referred to in hushed tones. Just outside the Lincolnshire town of Louth is a village called Authorpe and in the old post office you will find Hedgehog Care, to which she is committed with every last ounce of her being.
When I visited I was greeted by an eyeless dog, with two indentations in his head, nicely covered in fur, where eyes once were. Elaine got him from a place she referred to as the ‘death-row dogs’, a charity that tries to rehome dogs that would otherwise have been put down.
He is an amazing hound. He uses his nose a great deal – especially as he is pretty deaf as well – but to get about, he picks up one of his plastic toys and holds it in his mouth, out in front of him, like a white stick, knocking it on the ground and everything around him to navigate Elaine’s cluttered home.
Elaine has the grubbiest house I have ever been into, but she is not ashamed. There is a notice on the wall: ‘I’m not at all offended if humans walk out, but if you feel like you want to help, there are plenty of cloths and dusters.’ Few people take up the offer.
And when would she tidy up? The night before I arrived she had been up until 4 a.m. nursing two sick baby hogs – both unfortunately died. In everything, the hedgehogs get priority: they eat before she does, get cleaned before she does.
I asked about the silver disc on the wall – one of those things that adorn the walls of a rock star’s home. ‘Oh, that’s my daughter’s band,’ she said nonchalantly. This disc commemorated the band, Swing Out Sister, selling 250,000 copies of the song ‘Breakout’. Lead singer Corinne Drewery is Elaine’s daughter. I remember her as being unattainably glamorous and quite unlikely to be mucking in with her mother. But I was wrong there; Corinne will come when needed. Though she is prone to telling her mother a few home truths, threatening to send her away so she can clear the place up. ‘She says stuff like, “People just don’t live like this. Why don’t you get someone else to come and do the hedgehogs?” But when she comes, well, she doesn’t much agree with the disinfectant I use and insists we use white vinegar and herby stuff.’
Elaine continued, ‘I know I live in a tip, but my home is also the intensive care unit of the hospital. All the new animals come in here to be assessed. Any that need to, go straight to the vet, even though I know as much about hedgehogs. But I am not allowed to get all the drugs, as I am just a quack housewife. In fact, they often ask my advice. Anyway, no hedgehog has ever complained about the state of the house and that is what matters to me.’
I have to confess that I have never seen a kitchen like hers. There are four boxes on the floor containing sick hogs, there are syringes, medicines and pet food all around and in the sink, while on a shelf there are containers of drugs. I mention that the use-by date on one of the packets is 1999. ‘Still works,’ Elaine retorts. ‘If it works with the hedgehogs I use it. Some of these are banned now. I only give up when the labels drop off and I am not sure what is inside.’
Elaine had about 300 patients last year, but she is getting very bothered, because the number she sees has been steadily dropping. ‘Well, it could be that other people have set up their own hospitals, so they are getting the ones I used to. It could be that people just aren’t bothering to bring them in, or it could be that there are less hedgehogs out there. I know which I think it is.’
As she explained, ‘Most of my hogs came from around Louth, but where there used to be orchards, where there used to be pony paddocks and long gardens, there are just concrete and tarmac now. Hedgehogs can’t live without a home and if you crush them into a small space that they have to share with badgers, well, badgers just eat them like cherries. Hedgehogs need their own space.’
So did Elaine’s husband. After a move to the country and discovering that when rescued lambs pee on newly laid parquet flooring it explodes, he ran off with a more houseproud, younger model.
‘I don’t blame him at all,’ Elaine adds. ‘I had always been picking up animals, but the first hedgehog was Wilfred Pickles, a baby that got left behind when his mum moved her nest after I had disturbed them.’
That was thirty years ago.
‘They say with wildlife you shouldn’t love it, that you should respect it. But the day I do that is the day I give up,’ Elaine said.
While I was there a small gaggle of three girls plus their aunt turned up. None had ever been here before, but this is a regular occurrence for Elaine. Despite the murmurings, s
he is a favourite with children and she is more than happy to introduce her visitors to the hogs. Watching the little ones’ faces light up, it was clear to see why Elaine is a popular attraction. She has a no-nonsense approach, telling the children, without being patronizing, what is going on with the animals she pulls out of their bedding.
As they leave, I hear the tinkle of coins in the collecting box and I ask Elaine how she survives. She leads me round the corner to another building. There is a ‘Hogsfam’ notice in the window and inside is a charity shop; clothes, books, toys fill the room. Next door is another shed filled with new hedgehog-related merchandise: tea towels, mugs, T-shirts, etc. Every year she has a big sale that brings in some money and then she has some other, surprising patrons.
‘The bikers, aren’t they wonderful?’ she sighed. ‘Every April a local motorcycle club comes and does a slow procession, raising money for Hedgehog Care. Such good-hearted leather boys. I’ve every admiration for them.’
Not all her hedgehogs survive, though, and since she set up the centre in 1985, many hundreds have died. These are buried in a plot that Elaine has set aside for the purpose. There is a stained-glass window set in a brick arch that presides over this graveyard, and a slate with the following prayer carved into it:
Goodnight Hedgehog,
Loved briefly by few in our weary world
Of mistakes and indifference.
Wake up with hope in your happy heaven
Of grubs and peace and country treasures,
Where roads and poisons and humans
Will never hurt you or your habitat again. Amen
And then there is Elaine herself. While she is clear about her future, it is the hedgehogs that cause her worry. ‘Well, if I last another ten years before I snuff it, at the rate things are going there won’t be any hedgehogs left. So I can curl up my toes knowing there is no more work to do, and all people will be able to do is look at picture of hedgehogs in books.’