Filmstar Hogs

After the plant pot antics of the hedgehogs a couple of weeks back I decided to film the hogs regularly, in the hope of catching some good footage. So far I’ve got about 35 mins of hedgehog activity on film and its eventful to say the least. I’ve caught them headbutting each other, rolling apples, self anointing after chewing on rosemary leaves but last nights footage was the best. I spotted one of my large female hogs up by the feeding bowls near the backdoor. She spotted me but chose to ignore me and carried on munching. I hurried to get the camcorder and headed back out. She was still munching but, just as I started filming, she stopped eating and scurried off, behind my garden store and out of sight. I tried filming her behind the store and I could just make her out, she was pushing a piece of carrier bag under the store and out of her way. Then she ran right along the back of the store and popped out the end, right by my feet. I expected her to run away once she realised I was right beside her but she didn’t. Instead she looked right up at the camera and then climbed onto my foot. She grabbed my shoelace and tried to run off with it but as soon as the lace reached full stretch it pinged out of her mouth. Looking a bit miffed she turned around, came back to my shoe, grabbed the lace and tried to take it away again. The same thing happened, the lace pinged out of her mouth and back to my shoe. This time she grabbed the lace and slowly started to back away, tugging for all she was worth, her little legs trying as hard as they could to make ground and pull the lace away…it didn’t work. She let go of the lace and came back to sit on my shoe where she started chewing on the lace holes and the tongue of my shoe. It must have been tasty because she stopped and self-anointed for a good few seconds before continuing her shoe chewing again. Then the breeze picked up and caused my trouser leg to flap….and that was it. She grabbed my trouser leg and pushed as much as she could into her mouth, looking just like a hamster when it stuffs its food pouches!! With her mouthful of my trouser leg, she tried to run off but didn’t get very far at all so then she resorted to tug of war with my trousers!! Her feet were pushing against my shoe in her efforts and my trouser leg was getting slowly more and more covered in hedgehog saliva! This carried on for 10 mins until I realised the bottom of my trouser leg was soaked and chewed and all the pulling was starting to make my trousers fall down!! Can you imagine? the first person ever to be depantsed by a hedgehog?? I ended up having to stop filming so I could pull my trousers back on properly! The hedgehog would have carried on if I hadn’t have given her a little poke on the side which made her huff at me and stomp off!!! I wonder what she thought my trousers were??????

 Anyway, yesterday I got in touch with the BBC after someone told me that they were looking for people to write in about their garden wildlife and they might be used for Springwatch. This afternoon I heard back from the beeb. They’ve asked me to send in my hedgehog footage. So who knows, maybe my hedgehogs will be stars on this years Springwatch?? I can’t wait!!!