And yes - it is relevant to hedgehogs, trust me.

First - around 80% of the 17,000 very active and enthusiastic members of the Hedgehog Highways Facebook Group are women! Women rock the hedgehog world - the vast majority of carers out there, those running the hedgehog hospitals, are women. And when I scan through the names of the newly signed to this petition, again, most are women!

Why is this?

From the hedgehog's perspective too - please look away if you are of a sensitive disposition ... courtship can last for over an hour, with a male circling a female in what is known as the Hedgehog Carousel. The huffing and puffing is unmistakable ... have you heard it? Soon we will start to hear it again ... spring is bubbling along nicely. After all that hard work, and a brief 'interlude' in the form of mating - the male is off ... nothing more to do with raising young and seems to show no recognition to his offspring either.

So I think it is reasonable to celebrate women (and female hedgehogs) today!

In other news - the BHPS petition is getting tantalisingly close to the 100,000 it needs to get a debate in parliament. If we get a debate and get the law changed to give hedgehogs extra protection, there will be all the more power for our petition here. And conversely, this petition is also supporting the .gov one (and sorry, for all of you outside the UK, that petition is only available for people in the country.)

I had a moment of thinking my Twitter had eventually taken off last week - when I put out a tweet about the BHPS petition - a real sense of excitement that I was at last being recognised ... but ... as is always the case, you find that the likes of Chris Packham and Tom Holland (no, not Spiderman) have done a retweet! 

Other developers are taking the lead - not waiting for rule changes - to install hedgehog highways. Was great to see that Crest Nicholson have done this just outside Bristol in the delightfully named Hygge Park! It would be great to know if any of you helped make this happen - so often this sort of thing is stimulated by just one person writing a letter!

Finally - my friend, the ever so talented artist Debbie Lomas, sketched the picture for me - nothing special she said ... I wish she would embrace modern technology and have a website so you could all rush and buy her art! As it is, you will have to wait until her shop in Chester is open - it is called Rainforest and is on Watergate Row!