A couple of days ago there was a knock at my door - one of my neighbours introduced me to a father and daughter, clutching a cardboard box.
For more photos, and a chance to comment, please visit THIS version, thanks. I am particularly pleased with some of them - the eclipse ... and also a dramatic fire.
A neighbour had found them looking a little lost on the street, asked if they were okay, and was told that they were looking for the ‘hedgehog man’ … there was no doubt who that was!
As the photo I took shows, the box contained a hedgehog. And the story they told me showed how the message is getting out there, as to how to help our prickly friends.
At first they thought it was a rat, but when it did not move they had a chance to see who it really was. And then to see why it did not move or flee … the front left paw was tangled up in some netting that had been used to train a plant up some trellis.
Some people might cut the netting and left the hedgehog out in the heat of the early afternoon, but they knew enough to box it up and look for help.
My first concern was dehydration. I just checked the time on the photo, and it was 1538 - which means the poor animal had been there for at least nine hours, possibly longer. The paw was swollen, but did not look too raw, and there was no sign of fly eggs … oh, this is one of the most horrible things that can happen. A hedgehog getting caught in netting, being visited by flies, who lay eggs, that then hatch into maggots who start to eat the soft parts on which they find themselves …
I think the rescuers thought I might be one of those amazing people who actually does the looking after, but I know I am not cut out for that sort of work. Many of my friends do it - and I am always amazed at their energy. So I directed them to St Tiggywinkles - along with instructions to try and keep a jam jar lid of water topped up until the hog arrived at a place where fluids could be given.
Which made me think, again, how important it is that we keep giving the wildlife we share our space with as much access to water as possible.
I am back up near Birkenhead, spending some more time with my mother. There is a hosepipe ban, but I have been using watering cans to spot-water her most favourite plants, and, I would argue even more importantly, to top up the shallow dishes she has out on the lawn, and elsewhere, with water.
Hedgehogs, and so much other wildlife, will be really struggling with this extended drought. The heat, the drought, the fires - and I am sure, soon to come, the floods, have all been predicted for years, decades, by climate scientists. And it does leave me with a large chunk of fury that those who denied climate change was even a thing have swiftly jumped to trying to install adaptations to the damage their pathetic acquiescence to the fossil-fuel lobby has caused.
On Sunday I went for a swim in the Thames (I know, brave, but, I try and keep my mouth shut!!!) - as Zoe and I walked back to the car we noticed a column of black smoke rising in the distance. We could have just gone home, but decided, instead, to investigate. Now this fire at the Sutton Courtenay Landfill site may not have been caused by the weather, it could have been an exploding lithium ion battery some idiot threw into the rubbish, but with everything so dry, it will have made matter worse. And the overstretched fire crews given even more work to do.
That sun, the one that is keeping us alive, and a little too hot just now, is, as I write this, about to perform a magic trick. By the time I upload this article, I hope to be able to add a few photos too … the only sadness is that my mother feels the heat is too much to sit outside with me for a couple of hours … but I have set her up with a colander and a pair of binoculars!