hedgehogs

Hedgehog tattoos part two

Hugh Warwick 9 Comments

Very rarely do I feel that I have been in the vanguard of anything. There was a time when I was one of few people talking about the emergence of genetically engineered trees, and the threats to the environment that an unfettered release might cause. I felt then that I was on the wave. Everything else, well, I have either just been part of a pack, or ploughing a very lone course.

But now, I am thrilled to have assisted in the beginning of a new craze that is sweeping the globe at an unprecedented rate. No longer are people looking for esoteric celtic knots or the names of their children/loved ones/cities of conception. Mum, love, hate and ironic anchors are no more the tattoos of choice. The new tattoo is … well … I hardly need say … the hedgehog.

I received an email from Eryka Blank – the delightful mystery of emails is that you can have so little idea of who you are in contact with. I had no idea of country or age – just that she had read my book in its US incarnation (always a good starting point) and had been attracted by the images at the bottom of each page, so much so she was contemplating having one done as a tattoo. I sent her some larger copies of the pictures – the originals were done by the great artist David Shephard – and asked that if she did get a tattoo done, she send me a photo. And she has, along with a note explaining more about her and what motivated her … so here she is:

And here is what she had to say about herself:

“I agree, our tattoos should be friends.  I live in Madison, Wisconsin, and grew up in Cedarburg, Wisconsin.  I am in my third year of college studying Communications Arts emphasis on Global Communications, and a theater minor.  I have always loved the outdoors and critters, and I constantly surround myself with pets.  I love books like ‘Watership Down’ and ‘Life of Pi’.  I can’t remember how I got interested in hedgehogs, but I did quite a bit of research on them, have a  pet hedgehog (named Phinneus), and am a member of the Hedgehog Welfare Society.  I short story I wrote titled ‘Burberry and the Fox’ is appearing in the Nov/Dec issue of the Hedgehog Welfare Society newsletter.  Last winter and spring I get receiving mysterious packages (I suspect my parents may have had a hand in this) with little plush hedgehogs and hedgehog books.  One of these was ‘The Hedgehog’s Dilemma’.  I loved reading your book and every time I saw one of the little inked drawings on the bottom of the page I thought what a great tattoo it would make.  I judge art by whether or not I would be willing to get it tattooed on myself.  The little hedgehog is actually my fourth tattoo (the others are a circle of Beatles lyrics on my upper back- “Pools of Sorrow Waves of Joy are Drifting Through My Opened Mind”, a fiery colored swallow on my leg, and my beloved dog’s paw print on my ankle) and didn’t hurt much.  It stung a little, but was no worse than getting a shot from the doctor.  I thought, what better animal to have staring fiercely out of my arm at everyone? Eventually I want to get the whole arm that the hedgehog is on turned into a full sleeve of critters- air, earth, and water all represented. I hope whatever you get tattooed on your other leg is as worthy as your hedgehog!

Personally, I have a great fondness and respect for cheetahs, birds (like swallows and sparrows), and otters.  In fact, I think a river otter will be my next tattoo.  Whatever you choose I can’t wait to read about it in your next book.

Thanks,

Eryka

P.S. I recently did a speech on the history of the relationship between hedgehogs and humans for my speech class and I found your book to be an excellent reference!”

And as Eryka suggests, I am in the market for a new tattoo – but this is a serious one, one based on a competition that has already begun. There are advocates for different species all clamouring for my attention, trying to win me over to their particular animal. What will it be? Badger? Dolphin? Solitary bee? House sparrow? Owl? Otter? Water vole? Dragonfly? Fox? Porpoise? Robin? Bat? Any other suggestions?

That time of year again

Hugh Warwick 1 Comment

Hedgehogs are remarkable – their capacity to hibernate is a physiological wonder. They can shut their vibrant little bodies down to as close to dead as you can get. Heart rate drops from 200 to 20 beats per minute, breathing virtually stops (and who thought it was a great experiment to stick a hibernating hedgehog into an air-tight box, filled with nitrogen, and leave it for 2 hours … just to see what happens … which is, the hedgehog is fine).

The behaviour probably is behind the hedgehog being such a significant animal in early cultures – the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford has small amulets from Sumaria and Ancient Egypt in the shape of hedgehogs. And it has now been suggest that the small chalk hedgehog found at Stonehenge, associated with a child’s body, was placed there because there might have been some sympathetic magic hoped for – if the hedgehog can come back from the dead each year, why not my child? Though it could also have been a toy.

But I digress – hedgehogs can only manage to survive hibernation if they have stocked up enough on food during the autumn – i.e. now. So if you were feeling like doing a little something to help hedgehogs, now would be a great time to start putting some food out for them. There are many ways you can do this so as to reduce interference from cats, foxes and rats – have a look at the wonderful BHPS website for top tips.

And the reason why I am reminded of this all? I got one of a fairly regular stream of calls from friends who have found hedgehogs – wanting advice. Everyone is so apologetic about calling me, but if I can help, I love to be able to, and if I am too busy, will always redirect them to someone else. This person, though, had some rather special skills that I hoped he would employ. Adrian Arbib is a brilliant photographer – I first met him covering the protests at Twyford Down as the M3 extension was being forced through the beautiful countryside around Winchester – and he ended up photographing our wedding as a gift – a very fine one at that. So when he called to say he had found a hedgehog trapped in the stairwell of his house in north Oxford, on top of the advice I gave about getting it some food, I also asked if he would take some photographs …

Hedgehogs

Hugh Warwick 2 Comments

What a surprising title … but this is less to do with hedgehogs and more to do with Hedgehog II GTX … as in one of the most inappropriately named items of footwear I have ever come across. I wrote about this in my book – A Prickly Affair – and was reminded when I went by a shop window in town today and saw this:

Apart from the peculiar marriage of hedgehogs and off-road trail-running shoe – what really annoyed me was that no one at The North Face would answer my simple question of WHY … why choose that name. Oh – and my subtle hint that I would look just great in them seemed not to have been noticed by their marketing department … which is good, because I tried them on and they are made for people with pencil feet – thin thin thin – I am blessed with modified spades on the end of my legs – square – a bit like me really.

Unrelated to shoes – but the RSPB put out a press release which quotes me and it was fascinating to see how appalling the journalism in even some of the best written papers can be. For example, The Daily Telegraph manages to muddle rather key facts: “Hugh Warwick, a hedgehog expert at the RSPB, said intensive farming is forcing hedgehogs from the town into the country.” So, apart from the fact that I am not at the RSPB, I am intrigued as to how intensive farming might be forcing hedgehogs out of towns!

Any more strange hedgehog stuff out there? Please let me know. Thanks.

Stuffed

Hugh Warwick 3 Comments

Its been a long time since I have written here and there is good reason for this – after a little time spent pondering and prevaricating, Simon and Schuster have agreed to publish my next book – which meant I had to start writing it …. oh, and researching it … which is where I am now. And then there is the issue of the title too … I have had a few ideas that have failed the ‘google test’ … that is, when googled, other subjects come up that my distract potential readers from my good words …. So ‘Animal Passions’ failed … I should have thought that one out …. and so did my new word … turns out that other people had got there before me … ‘Faunacation’… the idea of being an animal – oh well, at least now I am happy with my latest (just got to see if the editor is) … ‘Beauty in the Beast’ … I am writing about my meetings with lots of people like me – people in the UK with passions for different animals – and everyone is trying to persuade me that, while they understand the attraction of hedgehogs – the solitary bee, sparrow, badger, water vole, bat, owl, robin, porpoise etc etc is far more interesting and far better at ‘selling’ a love of the natural world.

But this is not the purpose of the post … that is to announce the arrival of my first hedgehog – that will enable me to entertain all the more effectively. And also to indicate that (nearly) everyone’s favourite polymath has similar leanings to me … this might be the closest I get to Stephen Fry!

Mummified hedgehog on ebay!

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Pip has chicken pox – so we are having a quiet Sunday around the house and garden. He snoozed on me while I read a book I am reviewing … hammocks are an essential component of any book-reviewers toolkit. And the book, Four Fish by Paul Greenberg is brilliant – I shall say so in the New Scientist fairly soon. He has tackled humanities idiotic behaviour when it comes to fish in a delightfully engaging way … you don’t realise quite how stupid so many people have been until he starts to conclude … ‘If humans are at root rational creatures…’ he asks … now there is a question.

But the hedgehog mummy … well, due to Pip’s poorliness I am sitting inside with him while he listens to a story and I browse the web. Ebay – every now and then, when I am, like now, in limbo between work and play, I will browse through the site and see what hedgehoggy things are on offer … and then this – the pinnacle of a moment. As the UK begins to remember what life was like under the Thatcher government, already people are preparing for the austerity to come, and with it, great ingenuity.

The title was eye-catching …

Mummified Hedgehog Scientific Study Fossils

and then I clicked on it …

Someone is selling hedgehog roadkill as a ‘mummy’ hedgehog. There is a starting price of £15, which displays a great deal of confidence in the dead-hedgehog market … one that I am not entirely sure is warranted. But I am willing to be proven wrong … could this take off? Could it become the next big thing – never mind hedgehogs as pets – why worry about all that feeding and cleaning – the health and heating bills? You want that genuine hedgehog thrill without the work? Why not get a dead hedgehog!

burnhambadger is nothing if not diverse as a seller – his/her other items for sale include jelly moulds and plumbing  fittings.

I am strangely thrilled by this discovery … if only I had found this before I had finished A Prickly Affair / The Hedgehog’s Dilemma … but I think it might percolate into my standup routine (which may be restricted to the shower).

Now I must soak the boy in calamine.



The hedgehog’s contribution to architecture

Hugh Warwick 3 Comments

There is a wonderful gadget on the web – google alerts – you set it to alert you to the appearance of key words when they appear. So, obviously, I have ‘hedgehog’, my name and the names of my book (A Prickly Affair / The Hedgehog’s Dilemma). Occasionally this throws up wonderfully unexpected things – as it did today with a contribution to the latest edition of ecofriend.org. The headline, ‘Hedgehog translates into a livable design with grey water recycling’, was irresistible. And the image of a potential hedgehog-inspired building made me think it was time to try and find one for real.

All of the pvc spikes are light diffusers, and the copy of the article is delightfully clearly translated  – here is a sample:

“Designed by Cheungvogl architects, the Hedgehog concept of building is wrapped with the a skin that has been made of high gloss finished PVC sticks. These sticks, owing to their virtue of diffusing light, are called “Light Diffusers.” The skin of high gloss PVC sticks appear like golden-silvery shimmering rain. But, when seen from a close distance these PVC sticks become almost invisible. The direct sunlight is reflected due to the presence of light diffusers and reaches the interiors as diffuse or as we can say soft welcome light.”

And then, by complete coincidence, another architectural event with spines – the UK pavilion built for the World Expo in Shanghai has won a prestigious international architecture award. The BBC has a story about it here. Though for some reason they think it is inspired by a porcupine.

Hedgehogs are everywhere.

shoes

Hugh Warwick 4 Comments

There are moments when a text message can so completely draw you into a story – the perfect headline. And that is what happened today when Emma sent this simple message:

‘Last night a hedgehog ate my shoe.’

The message raises so many questions – was she wearing the shoes at the time? If so, was she prone in the garden, perhaps having tripped over offending hedgehog? Was this a gentle nibble or a more substantive assault? How were her toes? Were her shoes of finest leather – perhaps understandably attractive? Or do her feet smell of slugs?

Maybe it is the weather, but I was keen to find out more and as she had been deemed inappropriate for her latest appearance in the jury, she was free to pop round for a nice cup of liquorice tea and to show off her shoes.

Okay – that is not as clear as I thought it was going to be, let us try again:

This was not just a casual nibble, this was a feeding frenzy. Emma had gone into the garden to pick up her sandals and found them covered in what she thought was slug slime – then she noticed that they were incomplete and had a horrific thought that there was a shoe-eating slug on the rampage. And then she noticed , looking cheekily on, a hedgehog. There was nothing else around that could possibly have been responsible. But could a hedgehog really eat an entire strap (she checked around, found a few fragments, but most of it had vanished) and cause such damage? “It looked as if they had been attacked by a Jack Russel puppy!” she said. “And it is possible that the shoes were originally inside and the hedgehog had dragged them outside – I only think that because all the cat biscuits had gone as well.”

Now, I have heard stories of hedgehogs getting excited into a frenzy of self-annointing when chewing on leather shoes, but these are plastic – and more than that, this is not just a case of chewing and then frothing up into salivatory froth.

Self-annointing is one of the mysteries of hedgehogs – why do they generate vast amounts of frothy saliva and then contort themselves, spreading it across their spines? The obvious answers do not hold true (for all hedgehogs at least) – it is not noxious substances being applied to the spines to act as an extra layer of protection, or to disguise their scent – as distilled water has been show to set some hogs off. But it is usually strong scents and flavours that get hogs going – for example if you wash your hands with highly scented soaps, all sorts of strange things can happen with some hedgehogs.

And then there was a hedgehog I was radio-tracking in Devon (it was Nigel, again, a hedgehog that taught me so much). I had been watching him eat from along the verge of a quiet lane when he came across a slightly larger black slug – probably around 2cm long. He did not start to eat it straightaway, he began by scrabbling at it, dragging it across the surface of the road, leaving a trail of mucus – seemingly making the slug more palatable. After eating it, however, he starting smacking his lips together and building up a froth of saliva that he then spread across his spines.

So back to Emma and her shoes – is it possible that this young woman has feet that smell like slugs? Was that what set of the shoe-eating rampage? Or perhaps there is a hedgehog out there that has a foot fetish! “I am just glad I was not wearing them at the time,” she said. “Hedgehog hospitalises Oxford woman – now that would have been a headline!”

DVD

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Very exciting post this morning – just got a dvd from Tony Yeadon at Serendipity Pictures. A few weeks ago we went to Vale Wildlife Rescue to film this short piece with a hope of getting a commission … and I thought it would be fun to let more than just a few commissioning editors have a look.

Very rarely have I done anything quite like this – and I am learning. So, I would welcome comments and criticism – there is no point me pursuing this if the general consensus is that I will just frighten livestock.

So have a look, and please let me know. And if you are a commissioning editor … give Serendipity a call!

And to make it absolutely clear … this is PRETEND … I picked the hedgehog up as soon as I had finished and it went back in to the rescue centre. Hedgehogs out in the day are probably poorly (or being used as a stunt animal in a hedgehog-related drama).

Idle hedgehogs

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I have been accorded a great honour – I have had an essay published in the latest issue of The Idler. The 43rd outing of this journal is themed ‘Back to the Land’ and has contributions from many amazing friends: Paul Kingsnorth, Simon Fairlie, Jay Griffiths and Penny Rimbaud. Illustrations from Gee Vaucher rub shoulders with (and stand up well to) those of David Hockney.

I had heard about The Idler – but, to my shame, had never read a copy until issue 42 – a delicate offering entitled Smash the System. And now it has mutated from magazine to magazine disguised as a book, there is a risk that many others may too miss out on the opportunity to engage with one of the most radical and anarchic publications we produce. I was going to describe the essence of The Idler, but, in the spirit of the journal, I will let the already well-crafted words of editor Tom Hodgkinson take the strain:

“The Idler is a bi-annual, book-shaped magazine that campaigns against the work ethic. It was founded in 1993 by Tom Hodgkinson and his friend Gavin Pretor-Pinney. The title comes from a series of essays by Dr Johnson, published in 1758-9 in the Gentleman’s Magazine. The intention of the magazine is to return dignity to the art of loafing, to make idling into something to aspire towards rather than reject.”

The reason I am in the book is due to the wonderful Gavin – he of The Cloudspotters Guide, the Cloud Appreciation Society and – arriving in the post the very same day as The Idler, The Wavewatcher’s Companion, his very new … in fact as yet unlaunched … and undoubtedly best-selling book. I had stopped in to visit Gavin in Somerset, and while we strummed a couple of the ubiquitous ukeleles (I am not sure where the ukelele comes into the Idler ethos, but it is a recurrent theme), determined that there was a need for a deeper exploration of the importance of hedgehogs to a vision of an improved society – and where better to exposit than The Idler.

Yes, ukeleles – we bought one for Mati, but I think I have played it more. When presented with a chart for the chord shapes it is fairly easy to transfer most of what I know on the guitar into uke … And the ukelele featured, improbably, at the launch of Back to the Land.

I went because it sounded like a strange gathering of fascinating people – though most of the ones I know did not turn up. But that did not stop the event being memorable. Not least because I now know what Rough Trade is … a record shop (I thought it might have been some sort of night club). The evening was opened by Tom on the uke, next up was Ian Bone, the founder of the gentle campaigning (dis-)organisation, Class War. And then came the noise … it has been a long time since I have felt my teeth rattle in my head. I had heard of Zodiac Mindwarp and the Love Reaction (and their off-shoot, Zodiac Youth) but had not had the pleasure of hearing them (and, to be honest, I had managed to get them mixed up with Doctor and the Medics …) They were supposed to be joined by Adam Ant (who I had heard of) – but he failed to materialise – as did the love-reaction’s bassist. But this did not deter Mr Mindwarp from pulling out the stops, grabbing his crotch and making my ear-drums whimper in powerless protest to the onslaught (oh and if you follow the link to the myspace page, the music should carry one of those parent-advisory stickers – so if you are of a sensitive disposition – you have been warned).

An intermission, of sorts, from The Asbo Kid … again composed of people I had heard of – James Atkin and Justin Welch – and we came to the main act (or at least the most extraordinary) – Tom back on his ukelele giving a rendition of the Sex Pistol’s classic love song, ‘I am an anarchist’.

I left with my ears ringing, weaving in between the Brick Lane curry touts and down by Verdes – where I looked up at the windows above the shop in the hope of catching a glimpse of my hero – before being gently coerced into eating free (and rather excellent) falafels in the next door cafe (as they celebrated their first year).

By the time I got to the coach back to Oxford I was shattered and in need of something. You know that feeling when you just cannot quite put your finger on what it is you need? Well, I was there for most of the journey. And then I just tried my luck with my ipod – Richard Strauss, the Four Last Songs. Somehow that was what I needed – something to sooth my battered soul. It does not feel like it was that many years ago that Zodiac Mindwarp would have met my needs – and the me of then would have been astounded to find the me of now brought to the brink of ecstasy by songs for the end of life.

Oh – and the point of this post? Order a copy of The Idler – eye/mind/heart-opening and beautifully presented.

cause for celebration

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Due to a spike in the number of votes received by Caroline Lucas (Brighton Pavilion, Green Party), hedgehogs around the country are preparing for a night of feasting and dancing. As mentioned on these very pages only a few days ago, just one party stands up for the rights of hedgehogs with any true integrity. Only one party is willing to challenge the status quo of continued increases in consumption, tackled climate change as if it were important, fight inequality and lower the buttons at road crossings so hedgehogs can reach (or was that the monster raving loonies?) – anyway – a cause for great delight and rejoicing as the most honest and hard-working politician I have ever met is now going to stir things up at Westminster. I do not (as yet) have a picture of her with a hedgehog – but here she is with my dearly beloved:

I think she might have earned a copy of my book for this … will have to get one in the post.