Monday, May 16, 2011

Les hérissons

Hedgehogs. They are the cutest things, and they're good for the garden because they eat many pests. On Sunday morning I was moving some compost from my compost bins to the garden. There was a good-sized pile of straw in one corner of the compost bin and I thought it was strange. As I started moving the straw I found a big momma hedgehog and five little baby hedgehogs underneath. It was a nest.

They're hard to see, but there is a baby in the lower right corner, and another in the center bottom, just above an ivy leaf. They're rolled up into little spiky balls. The face you can see belongs to the mother hedgehog. There's a third baby just behind her head, and another behind her back end. The fifth is around somewhere.
Click to embiggen.

At first I thought I had stabbed the mother with my pitchfork. But I hadn't. All the 'hogs were rolled up into balls, their defense mechanism had kicked in. I scooped them all up with a shovel and put them under the hedge. Well, that is their name, right?

After a while they unrolled and started moving around. I got the camera and took a few pictures. The light wasn't very good under the hedge so I turned on the flash. I got a lot of blurry photos, but this one turned out ok and was one of the few I got with the mother's face in it.

As I was typing this, Callie started barking, so I went out to see what was up. She found the hedgehogs. They hadn't moved very far from where I put them earlier. I brought Callie into the house and calmed her down. She loves hedgehogs, or at least she loves to bark at them.

I hope they find a new place under the hedge to hang out and grow up. Like I said, we like them, and they're good for the garden.

15 comments:

  1. Do you think it was safe to move them? Especially with weathered 'hunters' like Callie and Bertie around. Or were you afraid that they would smell too much of compost after a while? :)

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  2. You're messin with me, right? I only see one big hedgehog. And I've been looking for hours! Okay, really only seconds, but still!
    Your Friend, m.

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  3. i have never seen a hedgehog in the "wild"......very cute, glad urs weren't hurt

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  4. They're wonderful. I've only seen on young one up in the hills of Buda. I hope this family will survive and bless your garden...I had to enlarge the picture twice to realize all the gray in the lower right, with the straw over it, was the baby you mentioned.

    One of my grandson's favorite books is by Jan Brett and about a Hedgehog who accidentally goes into space. Children in Europe really seem to love them.

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  5. Love seeing mama hog and her little pigglets. I've never seen such in the wild.

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  6. We have possums, yes here in Hollywood, I would rather have hedgehogs but the possums aren't destructive and they also eat garden pests.

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  7. "They're hard to see" You can say that again. But they're cute.

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  8. I double-clicked the picture and was able to see 2 of the babies. Very cool! My German friend just recently realized that hedgehogs aren't native to North America.

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  9. Thanks to all for your comments! The hedgehogs seem to have all moved on from where I put them, so I assume they're ok. I couldn't leave them in the compost because I needed to move that into the vegetable garden.

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  10. I used to be very fond of hedgehogs. So people would get me them, in stuffed, glass, wood etc. There is no lack of hedgehogs here!

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