How do you catch a hedgehog?

[YesitsBess]

This prickly butthead is Jumanji, she/he visits every night to eat all the cat food and, if you're stupid enough to be sitting outside with your shoes off, attack your -worms- toes.

Usually we just greet each other of an evening, however the last couple of visits I've noticed she has something around her neck, it's like blue plastic. It isn't stopping her eating or behaving normally - yet. But ideally I'd like to get it off of her.

Unfortunately she is very fast (hedgehogs can run and it's hilarious) and I don't have a trap.

Any ideas? She's sat opposite me munching a slug at the moment so I don't think she's is imminent danger.

Thank you for looking after your hedgehogs!

Hedgehog Cabin on Twitter/ Facebook has loads of info about feeding, how to spot a sick hog, etc, and she posts lovely tweets about her patients.

Please don't feed them mealworms, sunflower seed or other seeds/ nuts, fruit including dried, bread/ milk. Complete cat/ kitten dry food with a high meat content is best. If they are eating slugs, they are starving, as slugs are a last resort and carry lungworm which can be fatal.

A hedgehog out in the day needs help, please get it to a rescue right away.

🦔🦔🦔🦔🦔

That swan story is crazy @YesitsBess!!!! Feel like I would love to live on an islet though

They're all well and good until the power goes out. Bloody swans!

Love the name change @SpikyHatePotato

As per prediction, this made Talk Roundup.

Off topic but I love your name, @Intercity225 !

This thread has made my weekend, I love hedgehogs, as does my friend. Although now I find out they're spiky hate potatoes! I kicked one once, the apologised profusely (it was fine) and I've seen a few in the daytime, although I've been told if they seem busy to leave them be, it's only if they're moving slowly or still they need help.

Also didn't know that about slugs, I've only tolerated their existence as I think of them as hedgehog snacks, but knowing they make them poorly makes me cross! I hate slugs.

Realllly late to this thread as have spent the evenings detolling the house instead of catching up on Mumsnet, as my son has Covid.
I would love hedgehogs to come into our garden but we live on a river with a very high wall. In lockdown 1.0 though, my son found a pigeons egg that had fallen out of its nest. I sat there all afternoon turning the egg every hour and when both parents were away from the nest, I popped it back in. Pigeon returned to nest to sit on it. A while later a squab hatched. Was amazing to be part of it!!

Here is my angry potato. She huffs, curls up, has no table manners and eats more than you would imagine was possible - so very much like a hedgehog but she's a Tenrec.
Possible name choices were Quill I Am,
Spike Quilligan and if she was a boy then Prince Quilliam! We went for Peggy in the end!

Well done for rescuing Jumanji! So nice to read a positive thread!

Oh my word, look at Peggy! (Although Quill I am is genius) is she in a...coconut?

Yes she loves her coconut shell!

Off topic but I love your name, @Intercity225 !

I chose the name from DS's Hornby train set! I probably should have chosen Mallard really, one of his other engines, as I love A4 Pacifics - but that is in a cupboard. Out of sight out of mind!

@Intercity225 They're one of my favourite trains, and I get very excited if I see one, as I know LNER were phasing them out (until their new shiny modern trains went a bit wonky and they had to bring them out of storage again.) They're just so cool to look at, and about the same age as me! Although the Mallard is very cool too.

I would like to clarify that playing footy with the hedgehog above was accidental, I'd NEVER kick one on purpose, and it just scuttled off quite happily, although was probably most offended by my insolence.

I would like to clarify that playing footy with the hedgehog above was accidental, I'd NEVER kick one on purpose, and it just scuttled off quite happily, although was probably most offended by my insolence.

Yes, I do it sometimes by accident. I step out the back door to go to the garage in the dark - and accidentally walk into a hedgehog! They eat in our back garden, then use the space between the garage and house as a run through to get to the front garden and beyond!

Maybe it's not actually you walking into the hedgehogs, so much as them attempting an attack on your feet?

Agreed, they are trying to take you down and snaffle any snacks you may have secreted about your person!

@Intercity225

Off topic but I love your name, @Intercity225 !

I chose the name from DS's Hornby train set! I probably should have chosen Mallard really, one of his other engines, as I love A4 Pacifics - but that is in a cupboard. Out of sight out of mind!

Mallard would definitely be better than Sir Nigel Gresley as a user name.

(that knowledge was gained many moons and boyfriends ago).

Have pencilled in "Sir Nigel" as a future hedgehog name.

I like that the thread is expanding into other things though. Who knew you could get from hedgehogs to trains in so few steps?!

Have pencilled in "Sir Nigel" as a future hedgehog name.

Better than The Union of South Africa! We were due to go on a trip n it once, but it had to go in for repairs, so they sent another steam train! I was gutted!

Nigel has dropped right off the list of names given to baby boys last year. One assumes that's down to people not naming them after Farage rather than not naming them after a train named after (....Googles...ah good....) a railway engineer. OTOH, there were 15 Lucifers.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/what-s-in-a-name-archie-now-more-popular-than-charlie-rbqbcrnbs?shareToken=e8243748febdcbd155948edb98848451

We've moved this to Mumsnet Classics now. Thanks for the nominations.

@YesitsBess… in case you haven’t seen that this has been moved to Classics…

Do you know how he’s getting on?

This is timely, as in my Facebook memories today is a comment I made years ago relaying my excitement about the fact we might be about to over winter our first hedgehog together with a short list of names…

Quill.I.Am
Prick Astley
Albert Einspine
David Hasselhog
And the eventual winner
Pinelope!

🤣🤣

So glad this made it to the classics!

Little hog update of my own, I’ve gone from 1 to 3 hogs! I’ve added a house and a feeding station and they all eat like greedy little pig hogs. I’ve also managed to weigh them with the 2 smallest weighing just under 400g but the rate they eat I’m hopeful they’ll be a good size before hibernation (I’ll be keeping a good eye on them).

I've just come back as have been moving house, yay classics!

Am reading everything I've missed now...

Hedgehogs across the UK salute you MNHQ! Log your hogs!

Jumanji lives here now hartwildlife.org.uk/

I'm not going to tell you how to live your life! But if this thread made you laugh then maybe bung them a quid?

£5 + £1.25 gift aid thrown in HART Wildlife Rescue’s virtual bucket via their Just Giving page from me @YesitsBess! Great idea.

The wildlife rescue we partner with has reached out to us today… they’re over run, so we’re about to take 4 🦔🦔🦔🦔 hogs off their hands for the winter. I was only saying today to H8Husband that I hadn’t seen any in our area we were concerned about which is unusual…. Normally we’re hosting several by now!

So it begins again for another 6 months… we love it really!

Happy New a house too, @YesitsBess

New House