advised us<\/a> to feed hedgehogs cat food and beetles. We have six cats using our\u00a0garden as their public\u00a0convenience \u2013 should it be their takeaway too? As for the beetles, if an insectivorous mammal can\u2019t find any, how could\u00a0we?<\/p>\n\u2018Our trail camera has recorded entrances and exits, both to the food pipe and the garden itself.\u2019 Photograph: Derek Niemann<\/p>\n
At the beginning of August, our car left a DIY store looking equipped for a motorised joust, with a three-metre lance (aka drainpipe) thrust out of the front passenger window. Every night since, dinner has been served in a foil tray, down the pipe, cut to a third of its length but still beyond cat reach. Every morning, the tray\u00a0is found nudged out the other\u00a0end, empty.<\/p>\n
Our trail camera has captured all\u00a0this, giving us Somerset\u2019s answer to the snow leopard, live action photos of the otherwise unseen. It has recorded entrances\u00a0and exits, both to the food pipe and the\u00a0garden itself, slipping between\u00a0slats at the front, or slotting through the purpose\u2011made\u00a0hog hole in the fence at the\u00a0back.<\/p>\n
And here the comedy ends. We\u2019ll\u00a0stop this supplementary feeding in time for hibernation, but how will hedgehogs fare next summer and in summers to come? Must we manage the emergency for\u00a0as long as it takes them to adapt and evolve? Will they?<\/p>\n
Under the Changing Skies: The Best of the Guardian\u2019s Country Diary, 2018-2024, is available now at guardianbookshop.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Deep into the night, and out of our sight, tiny claws rake over plastic. The animal skitters halfway…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":626227,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[61,60,82,263],"class_list":["post-626226","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-science","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/626226","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=626226"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/626226\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/626227"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=626226"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=626226"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=626226"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}