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Sunday, June 17, 2012

Adieu, Spiny Griselda

I've been keeping an eye out for the hedgehogs in the evenings. It's been more than a week since I've seen one nosing around the edge of the lawn, or amongst the lupins. Perhaps they were just passing through on some spiny transcontinental adventure.

Yesterday I was out taming the front yard a bit (always only a bit; it would take serious work to really get it into shape, and the back yard where I can eat the fruits of my labor is so much more interesting to mess with), and I noticed a smell. It was the smell of the dead shrew left by the waste bins, only much bigger. So I looked around in the weeds for some other body, and there it was.
One of the hedgehogs! Quite dead.
They are much less cute all deflated.
I wondered what might have done it in. The cats do leave them alone. And then I remembered: a few days before noticing the first one, I saw my rose buds were utterly covered in aphids.
There are only two chemical products I use in the yard - some Roundup for the weeds that sprout in the cracks in concrete & can't be pulled, and anti-aphid stuff that I use quite sporadically. And I had sprayed the roses in the front yard, sprayed them good, just days before the hedgehogs made themselves known. I just may have done in my little insectivore buddies.
I feel awful about that. I hope the others got away.

1 comment:

shabby girl said...

When we lived in AZ, we had a pest company come every month to spray for things like scorpions and yard roaches. I always worried about the birds and other critters around, but never became a problem.
Sorry to hear about your little spiny friend.