Hedgehog!

There's a hedgehog in our compost heap, eating bread.

Sounds a bit like that classic children's book I remember from when the boys were small: 'There's a hippopotamus on our roof, eating cake'! But the hedgehog is real - I saw it scuttling away from me a couple of days ago, from the middle heap (where I'm currently adding stuff) into a little hole in the left-side heap, which we finished adding to a month or so ago.

I tend to add anything that isn't meat to our compost heaps, I don't just restrict it to raw peelings and annual weeds. We throw all weeds on, and anything edible that's vegetarian and so not likely to attract rats. That includes old crusts of bread, or bread rolls that have been forgotten. On Saturday I found a couple of bags of elderly bread in the kitchen so I threw them on top of the heap...

Yesterday I glanced at the hole where the hedgehog had disappeared to, wondering if it was still around, and noticed to my amazement a bread roll sticking out of it. The hedgehog must have dragged it in there somehow, it certainly couldn't have got there on its own. Today I had another look and the roll was only just visible, pulled much further into the hole. Not possible to photograph, unfortunately. I hope the hedgehog is enjoying it and that it will help itself to anything it fancies from the heap.

The best thing about hedgehogs is that they eat snails and slugs, and I had been noticing that there were fewer of them on the citrus trees then ever before.

I just hope the cats don't decide to attack... many years ago when Cleo was a kitten she did try to bat at a hedgehog, and obviously didn't like what happened to her paw! The hedgehog ran away and so did she. But the other cats are much less timid.