Not quite a month later and our little hedgehog is back home, off nesting somewhere in the woods that border our creek. Wildlife Rescue Cork got in touch earlier this week to say he’d made a full recovery and to ask if I wanted to help re-home him (easy YES!). I’m grateful the little guy chose to leave himself on our patio, as it seems that without a helping hand he wouldn’t have recovered from whatever it was he got into.
I drove up to Whitechurch on Tuesday to bring him home. And while I’m not sure there’s a normal place to make a hedgehog exchange, I’ll rank a school parking lot as sufficiently stranger than the Lidl parking lot I dropped him off in. Yes, don’t mind me, children, I’m just here to transport a protected species in a cardboard box.
It was more than a little distracting to hear him rustle about for the hour-long car ride home. All I wanted to do was peek into the box and see what he was up to. I was able to resist until I got home, though, at which point he’d (of course) curled back up and gone to sleep.
The downside to relocating nocturnal animals is that they’re kind of camera shy. He was reticent to come out of his box, so this was the best camera-ready smile he came up with. Definitely our hedgehog, though, as there’s no mistaking his large size.
He did shuffle off into the undergrowth eventually and seems to have made himself right (back) at home. I have no idea how hedgehog dynamics work, but I like to think that he’s got family in the area and there’ll be a joyous reunion when they all meet up.
