Hedgehog time
Here we go again! One can barely drive a kilometre or three before there is a "flattened animal" on the road, and it rarely requires the big Bible to determine what the animal was when it was alive: A hedgehog. The small insectivores do not have an easy life, because at Midsummer, they are burned, during the harvest they are ripped open, and when they finally want to find themselves a new home, they get run over. It is a shame, for hedgehogs are otherwise one of the most adorable animals! They believe so much in their own armour that they allow man and beast (and cars, etc.) to get up close and personal.
Hedgehogs have 6-7000 spikes, which in most cases is more than enough to prevent predators to dig in. However, there is one raptor who places hedgehogs high on the menu, and this is the great horned owl. This giant owl, which re-immigrated to Denmark in the mid-80s, has claws so long that it can simply peel the hedgehog from its own skin - just as when people with special equipment peel urchins in fine dining southern restaurants. The horned owls’ behaviour was revealed when many dozens of hedgehog skins were discovered in downtown Grenaa. They were found in gutters, trees and chimneys where the great horned owls at night called. The horned owl’s call is, however, nothing compared to the thousands of hedgehogs, which each year are killed on the Danish roads. Up to 100,000 hedgehogs are killed in this way, and there is no doubt that it has a negative effect on the population level.
Although hedgehogs sniffing can sound similar to the sounds of a pigsty, there is (almost) nothing piggish about the hedgehog. The hedgehog is in fact closely related to moles and shrews of the mammalian order, which is called insectivores. Like the other insectivores, the hedgehog is, just as fond of other meat dishes, including earthworms, spiders and snails, which is another reason why there has been an increasing focus on the spiky beasts: Hedgehogs eat slugs and with great pleasure. Thus, if it was possible to have 5-10 hedgehogs living in your garden, many problems would disappear.
When it comes to the choice of habitat, the hedgehog is quite demanding. The wilder the garden, the more appealing it is for the hedgehog. This is due to the hedgehog preferring plenty of brushwood piles, dense perennial beds, wide hedges and other hiding places. In other words, there is no shame in having a messy garden - it is obviously something you do for the benefit of hedgehogs.