You've done everything you can think of to welcome hedgehogs to your garden - you've put out food on the patio, left some leaf litter for them to scrounge in and now you're sitting back to watch your first prickly guests arrive - BUT YOUR GARDEN IS SCATTERED WITH DANGERS!
Hedgehogs will manage to get through amazingly small holes to reach the next garden or feeding area. They can also climb over fences or up walls, or reach roof gutters by squeezing up inside drainpipes, and getting stuck in food and soda cans carelessly left lying around.
Another hazard for the hedgehog is getting tangled up in nets. Unless it is rescued quickly, it will very likely die. Tennis nets should be looped out of the way, off the ground; other garden netting should be kept in the shed or hung on a wall. Netting used to protect soft fruit should be pegged down tightly at the edges, this holds the netting taut and so a hedgehog is far less likely to get tangled up.
But they also fall into things - holes, trenches, rubbish pits and ponds. They are not likely to be injured by falling on hard surfaces, since their spines cushion their landing, but being left in a trench or hole for an extended period of time means certain death.
Falling into a pond is not a big disaster as, like most mammals, they are quit competent swimmers. They will happily cross small streams in this way, but if they fall into a swimming pool or garden pond that has nowhere to climb out, they will certainly drown. Make sure your Koi pond has a gentle slope on one side or some vegetation which will provide an easy exit, but plastic pond-liners and fibreglass ponds, with their slippery sides, can defeat the most agile of hedgehogs.
Take care with pesticides, especially slug pellets. Only use pellets that have an unpleasant-tasting substances added, especially to put off hedgehogs, and conceal them where hedgehogs can't reach them.
But one of the most effective ways of controlling slugs and other garden pests is by using the services of the hedgehog itself! A high proportion of the hedgehog's natural diet - slugs, caterpillars, weevils, crane-fly larvae and many more - consists of creatures gardeners would be glad to be without.
Info from "Everything You Want To Know about Hedgehogs - Dilys Breese"
So why not make the hedgehog feel at home?
