Philip Larkin's Qualcast Commodore
The Guardian lamenting the decline of the British hedgehog:It is not a flamboyant showman of a creature, but quiet, nocturnal and discreet. Even though it has a great sense of smell - it can sniff a dog 35ft away - and can jump two feet to catch a beetle, and that a Russian hedgehog once found its way back home after it had been dropped 48 miles away across the tundra, the hedgehog is not, on the whole, a very clever creature. It has a very small brain and very conservative habits. It is no fox. One owner tried to teach his hedgehog a simple lesson - open the red door for lunch - 4,000 times. It looked the other way.
Because its spines are remarkably strong and elastic, and will cushion any fall, hedgehogs are perfectly happy to fall into cattle grids, pits and cellars because they bounce on landing. They don't think about how to get out afterwards. They doze in long summer grass where strimmers chop them up. They get tangled up in tennis nets. They die inside expanded polystyrene cups. The hedgehog smells something delicious left in the bottom of the cup, pushes its snout in to lick up the remains and then finds the cup stuck to its prickles. Many have been found dead with yoghurt pots and ice-cream containers clamped to their faces.
Because its spines are remarkably strong and elastic, and will cushion any fall, hedgehogs are perfectly happy to fall into cattle grids, pits and cellars because they bounce on landing. They don't think about how to get out afterwards. They doze in long summer grass where strimmers chop them up. They get tangled up in tennis nets. They die inside expanded polystyrene cups. The hedgehog smells something delicious left in the bottom of the cup, pushes its snout in to lick up the remains and then finds the cup stuck to its prickles. Many have been found dead with yoghurt pots and ice-cream containers clamped to their faces.