A Midnight Visitor

Just as I was about to go to bed this evening, I wandered down to the bottom of the garden to call the cats inside. At this time of year, they have zero interest in coming inside at any time after 11pm. Despite trying for an early night, I ended up having to stay up for an extra hour waiting for the idiotic animals to come home.

Normally, I would have been really frustrated. But I was thankful for their tardiness tonight! Our garden is poorly lit at night and so I walked down cautiously, trying not to wake the Topknot Gang as I went past the coop. Looking down at my feet to make sure I wasn’t going to fall into one of the chicken’s bath holes, I saw a strange, dark lump on the path. Closer inspection showed it to be an enormous hedgehog!

I love hedgehogs and they are so rare these days especially where we live in a very built up area. We go through phases at the allotment where we find them but only on two other occasions have we ever had a hedgehog in the garden. Our fence has a hedgehog hole at the base to allow the hedgehogs to roam between gardens. But for the past few years, this has been blocked due to next door’s dog.

How this hedgehog got into the garden I have no idea but we watched him excitedly. He tried to hide in the bushes when my husband shone his torch to see it. After he went admired it, he made the sensible decision to go to bed. I’m not known for making the best decisions, and besides, there was still no sign of the cats, so I stayed out to watch him.

Thankfully, I had some wet cat food and I put it out for him, hoping to persuade him to come out from the bush. Ever so slowly, ever so cautiously, out he came. He might have moved stealthily however, his eating was hilariously loud. A hedgehog chewing is a strange and quite distinctive sound and I tried my best not to giggle as he tucked into his unexpected dinner.

It was at this point that Thira appeared and was very unimpressed that food was being given to this spiked interloper. In disgust, she took herself inside and sulked for the rest of the night. Vasili waited another half hour before putting in an appearance. As I waited, I watched the stars marvelling at the wonders of the natural world.