Don't Hog the Middle Lane

I went "Up North" to visit my father this weekend. Don't worry, my Better Half stayed at home, hedgehog sitting, and checking the hedgehog videos, amongst other things. On the way down this afternoon, one of the overhead signs on the M1 motorway was displaying the message "Don't Hog the Middle Lane." In my one (hedgehog) track mind, that conjured up the image of Nightshift's ample rump between two white dashed lines disappearing into the distance. Would make a great poster, wouldn't it?

When I arrived home, a pair of videos had been selected for tonight's blog, to which the title seemed quite appropriate.





It looks like the first chappie on the ATM got a bit of a fright when the other hedgehog came through, as that's not toothpaste extruding from his rear end.

Nightshift didn't go round the front at all last night, spending a lot of time either on the 9c/9d feeders or in bed in 9c. She was up and about a bit, but not so much. Maybe she was just having a "duvet day".

She nearly had a rude awakening first thing. 9d was up early, as usual - before dark - and went into the tunnel in 9c for a few minutes. Fortunately, he didn't go any further and Nightshift got an extra lie in.

While I was at my father's I took the opportunity to cut some plywood with my circular saw. After thinking about it for a while, we have decided to upgrade 9f (the boiler room at the front) from a pile of straw to a proper hedgehog house. We think 9f should make a good location for hibernation with the brick walls, so we will put a house in the bottom to give any prospective tenants a feeling of security and a bit of privacy. We are considering making it a pair of semis, as there should be room. The number of hedgehogs around is giving us cause for concern that they might not find enough safe places to hibernate. It would be very sad to think that the babies were doing so well, and that they didn't make it through the winter.

When I cut the wood for 9c and 9d, Nightshift was asleep in 9b and didn't seem unduly bothered by the noise of the saw, but a couple of weeks ago I was drilling the outside wall to fix a new bracket for the downpipe after installing a water butt, and poor 9d was very disturbed by the noise. We thought it better to stop as we don't want the hedgehogs to get used to noises like that - the next time it might be a strimmer when they are snoozing in the long grass. So, it's "no more nails" for the downpipe bracket.

At least we will be able to give the hedgehogs rainwater to drink instead of filtered tap water, if it rains - we've only had 1mm of rain since we installed the butt. Our tap water has a nasty chlorine smell - and it just doesn't taste as nice as the wonderful water from my home town! Using bottled water for the hedgies is definitely not environmentally friendly and going a little too far.