Hedgehogs

 

Hedgehogs

Gareth's hedgehog, left, was intended to be a money box. Susannah's, right, wasn't!

I don’t know whether clay modelling is still something that children do at school. I came across these dusty hedgehogs that my children made when they were about eight years old. I suspect they had the same class teacher, two years apart, and perhaps the study of hedgehogs or other small mammals was part of the curriculum. It was definitely before the advent of the Great Education Reform Bill of 1988, always called Gerbil, but officially labelled the Education Reform Act.

Gareth's hedgehog had a very prominent nose. Perhaps his teacher made much of the hedgehog's predation on insects, snails, frogs, mushrooms and other delicacies.

Susannah's hedgehog is altogether smoother and more streamlined.

Before the National Curriculum was established, teachers were freer to follow their own pursuits and interests, to go off at a tangent. This worked well for those who still felt that children should be ’well grounded’ in the basics, the well-known Three Rs, but were able to interest their classes in other things. I well remember one seven-year-old excitedly telling her mother, ‘Mrs Cooke made fog!’

Anyway, the little hedgehogs my son and daughter made were brought home proudly to be displayed. My son’s work of art was intended to be a money box, with a slot in the top. Whether that was his idea or the whole class was encouraged to make money boxes, I don’t know. When his younger sister made hers, it did not benefit from a slot.

We used to see hedgehogs in the garden from time to time, but I haven’t seen one for an exceptionally long time. Our Jack Russell, Daisy, used to find one occasionally and come in covered in fleas. That was almost forty years ago. Fortunately, hedgehog fleas don’t survive on anything other than hedgehogs.

I’ve just found out that there are seventeen species of hedgehogs, though there are none in Australia and none now living in the Americas. New Zealand hedgehogs are an introduced species, as they are in the Outer Hebridean islands of Benbecula and North Uist.

They are distantly related to the much smaller shrews. Although their prickly spines are usually brown, the hedgehogs of Alderney, in the Channel Islands, are blonde.

In Britain, the population of rural hedgehogs has declined rapidly since 2000.