For me, the arrival of spring is not marked by hearing my first chiffchaff of the year, or seeing my first brimstone butterfly, but by the emergence from hibernation of our resident hedgehog. As she is blind, Poppet lives a semi-wild existence, free-ranging in our enclosed garden; and we supplement her natural diet with nightly provisions of hedgehog food. During her winter slumber I leave fresh water and biscuits at her feeding station, checking daily to see if she has woken and come out of her nest box to feed.
This evening I found the biscuits in her bowl reduced to a few crumbs. A telltale track zigzagged across the lawn, as though a tiny steamroller had flattened the unmown grass. I followed the path and found Poppet waddling through the flowerbed, her rolling gait reminiscent of a Victorian lady in a heavily bustled gown. She snuffled along the fence line, rooting under the ivy for beetles, slugs and earthworms.
When she reached a recently replaced section of the fence, she pressed her nose against the new panel and inhaled deeply. She began to lick the wood, her tongue tracing a damp, meandering trail up the post until she was balanced on her hind legs at full stretch. Dropping on to all fours, she shuffled along and began to gnaw on the corner of the lowest slat, smacking her lips and producing copious amounts of frothy white saliva.
She plonked down on her haunches, splaying her legs for balance. As she relaxed her back muscles, her spiny skin slipped up over her plump hindquarters, allowing her to twist round and flick the spittle over the gingery ruff of fur around her neck and the flattened prickles on her back. A number of theories have been proposed to explain this self-anointing behaviour in hedgehogs – it may repel parasites, serve as a sexual signal, or provide scent camouflage by allowing the hedgehog to mask its smell with environmental odours.
Evidently favouring a multifaceted fragrance, Poppet began layering the woody top notes with pungent base notes of fox faeces, her long tongue smoothing the now coffee-coloured froth across the flattened prickles on her back.
