Tuesday, June 27, 2017

Update on Roberta - our lady-hedgehog rescue

A few weeks ago I posted about our wildlife rescue – the lady-hedgehog who lived in our border hedges, now called Roberta. You can read the first part of her story a few posts down. I now have an update!! Roberta responded very well to the intensive care of the volunteer who took her in. Apparently because she had an old injury with one of her back legs she couldn't groom properly and had succumbed to mites. That’s what was pulling her health down. It was sorted quite quickly and she was subsequently placed with a foster carer for her retirement, a volunteer who has a walled garden and takes in the retired hedgehogs to safely live out their days there. At age around 7 years and with a dodgy leg Roberta was offered this safe environment.
What a surprise then for her new foster carer when within a couple of days of being moved into her “retirement home” Roberta had a litter of hedgehogs! Yes, the volunteer from the British hedgehog Preservation Society had phoned to update (as promised) and to congratulate us on becoming grandparents to a litter of hedgehogs...
We were all very excited because of course with Roberta being in her retirement years it was completely unexpected. Apparently at the point where we found her, unwell, she must have been a few days pregnant and there would have been a risk with her having to be x-rayed, but all was well and now there are lots of little hedgehogs in that walled garden too. The lovely British Hedgehog Preservation Society local volunteer informed us we’d not only saved one little life, we’d saved many. Well, the kudos goes to them – such lovely people – and it was so good to hear!