We have hedgehogs, we first noticed them in September when it was still warm and i left the back door open in the kitchen and they were happily scoffing back the cat food our cat had not eaten. We were really surprised and quite astonished, they ended up being regular visitors as i left door open nightly for them and they cleaned the bowls at the end of the day much to the annoyance of the cats who were powerless to do anything against all those spins.
We have a garage with a back entrance that has the door open and as it got colder in October the hedgehogs decided to take up residence in our wood pile in the garage and come out for nightly feeds, and were happy to let us stand by and watch and until they got their feed and scuttled back to the wood pile, it was quite nice as when we saw them only 4 weeks previous they were really really skinny hedgehogs and knowing that they would go into hibernation in November we thought they might not make it, but it the short time they were with us before their sleep they put on weight and when March came round they both awoke and padded around clearing bowls again.
The smaller of the two we think has gone off into the garden eating all our slugs and snails and boy do we have a lot of those, but the bigger one has decided to take up residence with us even though he has the freedom to leave any time and i have even picked him up and placed him the the middle of the garden and told him he could go, he just came back, i guess he is happy living in the garage with free and easy food and he looks really healthy now. When he knows we are there he now makes a funny little noise he never used to do I'm hoping its a happy greeting rather than a warning.
I read that hedgehogs do not live very long in the wild, about 3 years and hoglets can only live for about 3 to 4 weeks if they are unlucky which many of them are due to starvation from fenced in gardens, poison slug pellets and loads of other thing make their lives very short lived. I also read that a house had a hedgehog as a pet ( not that i would ever treat our hedgehog as such) and that this pet hedgehog lived for 14 years and was sadly missed when it died. So it is really is quite nice having a strange and interesting hedgehog taking up residence, in our home and one benefit i have seen so far is that my Hostas that are on the patio haven't been munched so far, Good job spiny Norman.
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