Hedgehog A&E

From Tony Thain:

We have often been asked exactly what we do with hedgehogs that are admitted to our first aid unit. Hopefully this will give an insight to some of the work that Tonia carries out to return our prickly patients to full health and release back to their environment.

In the last episode sent to The Diary I mentioned that a hedgehog had sought out Tonia during her evening rounds, and that it had a nasty wound possibly caused by a garden implement or by being caught up in abandoned rylock or barbed wire. The wound is now almost healed but there is still work to do each day to clean it out with saline and coat it with Manuka Honey, as well as massaging with Aloe Vera cream to stimulate regrowth of damaged and lost spines.

Once "Samantha" as she is called, has had her appointment, it is time for "Tigger" to have a full on physio session. Tigger is the son of Trina and he managed to hurt himself somewhere in the garden; also, by biting Tonia he was dropped a couple of inches onto carpet; and at the last report had just returned from a visit to the Vets in Fort William. The Vet had made it quite clear that there was nothing that she could do, "As hedgehogs are difficult to deal with: they keep rolling up!"  Well, here are some pictures of a "rolled up" hedgehog!

The first thing that Tigger has to face is the "Hydro-Therapy pool". Here he is encouraged to use all four legs and although all hedgehogs can swim, Tonia keeps a steadying hand under the animal for support so as not to stress him out too much. I think that Tigger enjoys his swim in warm water as he is not too keen to come out.

Next there is warm air from Tonia's hair dryer to dry off all the thick fur on his underside.  This relaxes Tigger and he often just lies there with his feet in the air until he is dry.

In order to keep the back muscle supple Tigger has the ubiquitous Aloe Vera massaged into his back, followed by a gentle massage of his front legs.

Finally, to get some more exercise Tigger plays "Murder Ball".  We roll the ball to him and he grabs it and "Murders" it! This gives him a lot of exercise to all legs and he tends to forget about his poorly legs. Slowly he is improving, but I think that he may overwinter with us so that he is fully fit for the Spring. We have been speaking to Tiggywinkles about the situation and they do the same sort of physio on some of their animals, but they have advised that muscular injuries take a long time to heal.

As if Tonia doesn't have enough on her plate with these two, another hedgehog arrived at 6.00pm and obviously wanted to book into the hospital. This one appears to have a bad case of worms as she is slowly starving and is a bigger and older animal than we first thought.

In the meantime Trina's two daughters have been released, but the weather changed severely overnight and they decided to stay. Soon we are going to have another go at releasing them, when the weather stabilises.

Many thanks to Tony Thain for story and pictures.

Communal Bathing

The Sparrows were bathing in our makeshift bird bath this afternoon.  At one point, there were six of them crowded into the tub together, one of them Blondie, and they were thoroughly enjoying themselves.  Communal bathing is practised in some human societies.  Perhaps we should instal a huge hot tub at the Community Centre.

A Run to the Lighthouse

We took a run out to Ardnamurchan Point lighthouse this morning in real turn-of-the-year weather - bright sunshine alternating with sudden, heavy showers, and an occasional peel of thunder.

A stiff northwesterly was blowing the weather through - looking out towards the horizon you could see what was coming next.

This sort of exciting weather suits this area wonderfully.  The air is fresh and keen, the wind seems to chivvy everything along, and the sunshine, when it happens, is toasty warm.  To add to the joy of it, the heather is now in full bloom, covering parts of the countryside in carpets of purple.

The dry cargo carrier Burhoui, which we've seen before, was rounding the point southbound.  Her company, the Alderney Shipping Company, is registered the Channel Islands.  It was good to sit on one of the picnic benches and watch the gannets attacking shoals of fish.

The Lighthouse, which is run by a local charitable Trust, has a cafe, shop, exhibition rooms, and a small cottage, converted from one of the Lighthkeepers' houses, which can be rented.  The Trust is celebrating fifteen years of successful trading with a party, to take place at the lighthouse on 15th September at 6pm - details here.

Fish Identification

Can anyone identify this fish, caught on Sunday by Kilchoan Early Bird?

A Small August Storm

The weather forecast was absolutely right - by mid-morning today we had force 6 winds blowing from the southeast bringing mist and 10mm of rain - miserable enough weather to make one glad that one wasn't camping in Trevor Potts' campsite.

But then the weather did exactly what had been predicted: the wind went round into the south, the rain cleared, and the sun came out in surprisingly warm intervals.