during the spring, summer and autumn i get quite a lot of hoggies in my garden, and i love watching them. but i have also found injured or sick ones. one had lost a back leg, another one, someone had obviously tried feeding it with scrambled egg, its spines around its head were caked with it and it had some stuck over 1 eye, another had a broken leg and was walking around in circles, and another two (including the one i wrote about) just were not well. they were all out during the day. all of them went to the p.d.s.a.or to a local vet. except the one with the broken leg . i phoned the r.s.p.c.a for that one, and was very upset because it took almost 11 hours for someone to come about it, he started to pick it up from the box and managed to drop it onto the concrete, he took it away with him and about an hour later phoned to tell me that it was so ill it had been put to sleep.
all of the others were nursed back to health after seeing a vet and then taken to a hoggie rescue place. the one with a missing back leg was evidently sent to someone who has a very large enclosed garden. i was told that foxes often stand behind a curled up hoggie waiting for it to uncurl and then they grab a back leg and fling the hoggie up into the air. we have lots of foxes around here.
my next door neighbour once shouted for me to say she thought there was an injured animal hiding in the bushes at the bottom of my garden ( 4 railway tracks just beyond) so i got my torch, and a long piece of wood to move the bushes with and off we went. we were a bit scared as we didn't know what we were going to find, but there was something making a noise in there. when i lifted the branches up we both burst out laughing. it was a pair of hoggies doing what nature intended! i said sorry for being so nosy, and we beat a quick retreat, and left them to it.