Ten o’clock in the evening and it is still warm enough and with sufficient daylight left to type outside in the garden. Birds are chattering their goodnights in the trees down by the beck but apart from that, all is still.

A few years ago it would not have been unusual, on a night such as this, to come across a hedgehog trundling his way through the gardens hereabouts foraging for food. But sadly, over recent times, apart from the odd road kill I cannot recall the last time that I saw a hedgehog in the flesh. Hedgehogs have changed very little over the last 15 million years and despite their popularity as the gardener’s friend, numbers are still reported to be declining rapidly in the UK, which is all the more reason to offer assistance if you find one in distress. Being a nocturnal creature, you wouldn’t normally expect to see a hedgehog in the middle of the day and certainly not one lying quietly in the mare’s field, at the livery yard where we keep our ponies, but that’s exactly what happened last month.

When the horses live out for the summer, everyone takes a turn at removing the droppings from the field where they graze, and that’s when my friend came across a small prickly bundle lying motionless in the grass. He was lying so still that at first she thought he was dead, but on closer inspection he was discovered to be just about breathing.

Fortunately for Fred, as he soon became known, we have a local lady in the village who cares for hedgehogs in distress and so he was taken to her without delay. He was very thin, weighing just over 300 grams, his spines had an orange tinge and he was obviously a very poorly boy.

After spending a few weeks in hedgehog hospital, the time came when he was ready to be discharged, weighing in at a much healthier 900 grams and his spines had returned to a more normal colour. We believe Fred to be a mature hedgehog but sadly, whilst he was being cared for, he was also discovered to be blind, which may well have contributed to his original poor condition. I don’t suppose we will ever know why or how he lost his sight, but it is not unusual for hedgehogs to develop cataracts with age. This does tend to be a gradual process which allows for a period of adjustment, but nonetheless Fred is now classed as a disabled hedgehog and the advice given was not to return him back to his field, as he would be unlikely to be able to fend for himself.

But all was not lost and thankfully Fred’s story does have a happy ending. The lady who found him originally, agreed to take him home so that he could live out the rest of his days in her garden, which now incorporates a feeding station and a safe hedgehog shelter. Initially a run was constructed for him to live in, but Fred had other ideas and despite his disability managed to escape, so he now has the full run of the garden instead, where he can enjoy both his freedom and an a la carte hedgehog menu.Despite the absence of hedgehogs in my garden, I do still leave a shallow dish of fresh water close to the hedge, from which I have seen a fox drinking on occasion. But on a warm summer night like tonight, I do miss seeing my small prickly visitors, passing through on their nightly forays.