Hedgepig.

Kittyfrisk · October 2023

I haven't seen any of these beautiful spiny norman's in my garden for years :-D
Let my latest lodger, a lurcher, out tonight & she went straight to something & was 'pointing'.
Shone a torch & saw the visitor so ran indoors, grabbed my phone & tried to get some photo's while dropping the torch & stopping the dog from escaping...
Hedgehog legged it under the garden gate, so I hope it does OK outside with the roads

They are such lovely creatures

S56035 · October 2023

Never heard the name Hedgepig. Love it. Brilliant as they are I hate them in the garden as the dog goes crazy. Not sure who would come out worse if I let her out though.

Kittyfrisk · October 2023

^ I believe the name Hedgepig is from the Romani, I heard it many years ago & it just seemed so appropriate as they really do sound like pigs (& bloody loud) when heard at night if you are camping .

Emp_Fab · October 2023

Oh I adore hedgepiggies ! It breaks my heart when I see them flattened after trying to cross a road.

Emp_Fab · October 2023

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Kittyfrisk · October 2023

Emp_Fab said:

Oh I adore hedgepiggies ! It breaks my heart when I see them flattened after trying to cross a road.

Exactly. I nearly got run over many years ago in Greece while trying to escort an albino hedgehog over a road at night at the entrance to the village.
I live in a rural location & I know from conversations I have had, that some of the local cunts actually aim to run them over for 'sport'

Karma, come on in & do your thing...

Emp_Fab · October 2023

This forum doesn't like YouTube short links but if you reassemble this, it's nice...

https://youtoob.com/shorts/kiQWiT1CCJA?si=qDa4tyzaPavmisTQ. (change the youtoob to YouTube)

AK99 · October 2023

Yeah they're an odd beast right enough. Never saw one in my life as a kid, but since we moved further South, seem to always at least one or two ending up stuck in the walled back-garden every year - which used to send the dogs crazy, and then the lady of the house even crazier when the kids used to bring them in.

You do feel obliged to look after the little buggers

Kittyfrisk · October 2023

You can possibly see why the poor little sod might not have been pleased at the intervention...

richman6100 · October 2023

I regularly have hedgehogs in my garden. Foxes too. I feed them in the winter months when life is tougher for them, especially as the hogs are trying to fatten up before hibernation. I've got some hilarious videos from my CCTV where a hog has got to the food first and a fox has to wait patiently for it to finish eating. Foxes know better than to try and push a hog out of the way.

jdgm · October 2023

Think they are related to pigs?

Used to get one visiting all the gardens on my estate, ate the slugs but a cat chewed its leg. We took it to Hydestile animal rescue but it didn't survive. Far too many cats round here.

BillDL · October 2023

I nearly splatted one on Friday night in the goods vehicle yard at my work. I was moving artic trailers around and switching tractor units while two other trailers were waiting to get onto loading bays and I saw the little shit scuttling across the middle of the concrete apron. Every time I moved close it would curl up, and each time I moved away it uncurled and tried to make a beeline for the parked trailers. If it sought safety under any of the trailers it would have had 12 or 18 wheels to hide under in the dark and I would have had to check every trailer before moving them. Each time it uncurled I tried to usher it in the opposite direction towards a grass embankment away from the vehicles, and this went on for about 15 minutes while imaptient drivers were waiting. I eventually had to unceremoniously roll it into a box and take it outside the yard, hoping that it wouldn't scuttle back in.

hollywoodrox · October 2023

I had to dispose of a dead baby one a few months ago , it had died on the main footpath alongside the road by our house and was smelling pretty bad. It’s tiny little feet , poor thing

Benm39 · October 2023

We get quite a few in our garden and Mrs has taken to feeding them. They are very sweet creatures and ridiculous on just about every level. We love them

Brio · October 2023

Emp_Fab said:

This forum doesn't like YouTube short links but if you reassemble this, it's nice...

https://youtoob.com/shorts/kiQWiT1CCJA?si=qDa4tyzaPavmisTQ. (change the youtoob to YouTube)

Just delete shorts/ then it embeds. For example

axisus · October 2023

We had a sad story last year, a mother had been seen with three babies, then the mother got run over. One evening later around dusk we saw one of the babies (about tennis ball size) in our garden. We rustled up a wee carrying case for them (Big cornflakes box with the big side removed, stuffed with grass etc, put one in, managed to find a second, but the third was nowhere. We were sure that they would have been together. Went to ask one neighbour, searched their garden - nothing. The house on the other side was recently purchased but no one in. We have a shabby wire fence just 8ft wide between the bottom of our garden and theirs. We pulled it partly down and went into the shambolic mess of a garden, searched around and eventually found him under an old pallet! Called my sister in law who is a Hog expert and she knew exactly where to take them to get looked after. They were so cute!

Brio · October 2023

More cute animals

Brio · October 2023

I remember when you could put them in a box with holes in it and Red Star would deliver them to St Tiggywinkles free.
There again I'm old enough to remember Red Star...

DiscoStu · October 2023

We've had a couple this year. This one came round during the day which is usually a concern, but it seemed sprightly enough and was happy to get stuck in to some cat biscuits.

HAL9000 · October 2023

We live in a rural area and have at least two hedgehogs almost every night. Other houses in the village will often get half a dozen or more.

Haven’t heard the term ‘hedgepig’ in years. It was reasonably common where we used to live in West Sussex.

RandallFlagg · October 2023

We have at least one that lives under our shed, we put out cat food, loves it.

Tannin · October 2023

I've seen one! Not bad for a chap who has spent a lifetime grand total of six days in the United Kingdom.

Sadly, not a good picture. I was very late to check in to my pub in North Yorkshire - Giggleswick in fact, which has to be the best place name I have ever heard of other than the immortal Woolongong in NSW or Tasmania's Nowhere Else - and afraid that I'd be locked out of my room, so when I met this little chap I took a quick snap with my shirt-pocket camera and hurried onwards.

Bugger it, I had a far better gear with me (5DSR and 100-400 II) and all I had to do was take two minutes to dig it out of my bag and (most important of all) lie down on the road to get on a level with the subject. But I didn't and now I regret it. I know now that my accommodation wouldn't have cared if I'd been another hour, I'd have still had a bed for the night.

Oh well, it's all water under the bridge now. And I have actually seen a hedgehog, which is something I didn't expect to see.

Image: https://tannin.net.au/other/dpr/230724_214514_G9Xxc.jpg

Tannin · October 2023

Usually I see these instead:

Image: https://tannin.net.au/upload/05/051023-104726-576f.jpg

No relation at all, of course, and nothing even slightly in common, not even diet, the only similarity is the spines.Mind you Echidnas are much larger. We see them here on our property in southern Tasmania every now and then. They wander about the countryside looking for ants to eat. Or ( at this time of year) looking for sex, of course.

How do Echidnas have sex I hear you ask?

Very carefully!

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