The Hedgehog House

The teddy bears have been very keen to attract more wildlife into their garden. Lots of bees, butterflies and birds already visit regularly, and the bears have seen Robert The Rabbit once or twice too.

So they were very interested to read a leaflet from the Hedgehog Society (more properly known as The British Hedgehog Preservation Society) outlining how to help hedgehogs in your garden.

It included things like not using slug pellets and remembering to check for hedgehogs (and other wildlife) before mowing or building bonfires; things that they already do. But it also mentioned offering hedgehogs a home in which to hibernate during the Winter, and to use as a nesting box for a mummy hedgehog and her babies in the warmer months.

This sounded like a brilliant idea! The bears checked up on what sort of house they could buy and eventually decided upon a large wooden one with a separate sleeping compartment. It arrived a few days later in just two separate pieces - the main box and a removeable roof. Even Charlie thought that he could supervise the building of that!

He enlisted the help of the other bears and they first of all laid out some gravel in a quiet, shady part of the garden - this would help with drainage of rainwater from beneath the house. They covered that with some plastic (so the house wouldn't soak up any ground water), and then placed the main structure on top of that. Hopefully the hedgehogs would at least be dry.

Although hedgehogs will apparently move their own materials into a new home, the bears decided to give them a helping hand by providing some straw they had in the shed (for keeping their strawberries off the ground in the summer) and some dried leaves (which they had collected the previous Autumn).

The little bears couldn't resist having straw and leaf fights, throwing the straw and leaves around. Although Charlie initially smiled at these antics, he did eventually stop them playing and had them tidy up and then put down some nice straw and leaf bedding in the living compartment of the house.

Now all that was left to do was to fix the roof on top. Charlie and Teddy heaved the roof into position and fastened it so that it wouldn't fall off. They also set out a saucer of water (not milk!) for the hedgehogs to drink, and checked that there was enough of a gap in the garden fence for any hedgehog to fit through on their nightly travels.

After such an energetic morning, the bears settled down with some lemonade and biscuits to admire their handiwork. Harry wondered how long they would have to wait for some hedgehog residents. Scary said that they might not even know there were hedgehogs in the new house as hedgehogs are nocturnal (that means they only venture out at night) and unless the bears stayed awake all night and could see in the dark then they might not even know any hedgehogs had moved in. But at least those hedgehogs would have a cosy place to sleep in when they did.

Perhaps you could look up how to help hedgehogs in your garden too, and maybe even set up a home for them to live in.