Tiny Hattie’s life hangs in the balance as she arrives at Burntisland Hedgehog Haven freezing and infested with fly eggs.
“I’m not sure she’ll make it,” admits Sharon Longhurst as she carefully combs eggs from Hattie’s fur and needles.
Left any longer maggots would hatch and begin eating the three week-old hoglet. Flystrike – when flies lay their eggs in animals – is a common fate for hedgehogs.
Hattie is placed in incubator. Despite the best efforts of Sharon and husband Andy, she dies a few hours later.
She is one of 25 hedgehogs in the care of Burntisland Hedgehog Haven when we visit.
Hedgehogs are designated as vulnerable to extinction on the Red List of British Mammals.
But Sharon, 46, and Andy, 58, try to save as many as they can.
They run their rescue centre in the garage of home they share with son Finn, 10, in Burntisland, Fife.
Fortunately most of their prickly patients fare better than Hattie.
Hoglet Fudge rescued from Burntisland fairground
Such as Fudge, an abandoned hoglet found under a ride as the Burntisland Links fairground was dismantled.
Fudge’s prognosis was as grim as Hattie’s.
His mum scarpered when her nest was disturbed. Showmen put Fudge in a bush hoping she would return. When he was still there the next day Burntisland Hedgehog Haven was alerted.
Sharon says: “He’d spent nearly 24 hours calling for his mum. He was stone cold when he came in.
“He also had a neck wound as when they took him back out of the bush he got caught on some thorns.
“I actually thought we were too late, he might die.
“But here he is!”
Fudge snuffles contently around his cosy cage which is packed with torn up newspaper.
Sharon fed him every two hours until he became stronger.
Three weeks on Fudge has almost doubled in weight to 241g and will be released back into the wild when he reaches 650g.
Another patient at Burntisland Hedgehog Haven is Oasis. She was named after the concert ticket sale on the day she was found at Lochgelly Public Park.
Sharon says: “She was going to be called Liam or Noel until we discovered she was a girl!”
Hedgehogs should only be seen at night
Elderly Henrietta was found by children at Limekilns Primary School. As she has had to have her rotten teeth removed she will be released into a contained garden and fed for the remainder of her life.
People call upon Burntisland Hedgehog Haven when they spot one of the spiked creatures looking poorly.
Explaining when people should call for help, Sharon says: “Hedgehogs shouldn’t be out during daylight.
“If they are, nine times out of 10 it’s because they are poorly and cold and they are trying to warm up in the sun.
“The only exception to that would be a nesting or nursing mum but she would be moving from A to B pretty quickly.
“Any other hedgehog out during the day, if it’s laid out, if it’s wobbling or moving slowly, it needs rescuing.”
Never did Sharon and Andy imagine when they moved to Burntisland and began spotting hedgehogs around their home that they would come to set up a hospital for the creatures.
How Burntisland Hedgehog Haven began
Sharon says: “We enjoyed watching them. We put cameras out and started feeding them.
“Then we found a hedgehog which was needing help. It was laid out and had really bad flystrike.”
With a neighbouring hedgehog rescue charity in Rosyth unable to take it in, Sharon and Andy made a 50 mile round trip to the SSPCA wildlife centre in Fishcross.
“A couple of weeks later we found another one and again there was nowhere for it to go. We did the same thing, drove it to Fishcross.
“But not everyone is in the position to do that so I thought we need to do something.”
Sharon and Andy, who is also a Jog Scotland run leader, trained in hedgehog care and set up a rescue centre in their spare room for up to seven hedgehogs.
Sandy Boyd, who had retired from Wormit Hedgehog Centre, gave them a lot of his equipment.
Their first patient Adam arrived in March, last year, infested with ticks and lungworm. They nursed him back to health for release.
But Sharon says: “It quickly became clear seven was not enough, we were going to have to go bigger.”
From a playroom to a hedgehog hospital
That’s when they decided to convert the garage which at that point was being used a playroom.
Since then other patients have included a hoglet found by a road next to her mother who had been run over. They have also taken in a hedgehog soaked in creosote, one tangled in football netting and another which was being kicked around by youths.
Hattie was their 244th admission.
Sharon and Andy have been overwhelmed by the support they have had from the local community who donate money, supplies and equipment.
“We’re also so thankful for people raising the alarm in the first place,” says Sharon. “Without them we can’t get them [hedgehogs] here to treat them.”
They also have a team of volunteers who help clean out cages and “hogbulance” drivers who collect hedgehogs when necessary.
When hedgehogs arrive they are assessed in the intensive care unit. Besides flystrike, common ailments are fluke, roundworm and lungworm.
Sharon says: “They pick these up in the wild and without treatment the parasite will overtake them from the inside and they will die.”
Depending on the diagnosis, hedgehogs go in an incubator or cage.
‘They’re not pets – we treat them as wild animals’
If they have flystrike or fleas – the latter is much less common in hedgehogs than people believe – Sharon and Andy will carefully brush the eggs from them.
Each patient is named, but Sharon stresses that is for identification purposes only.
“They’re not pets and we treat them as wild animals. We interact with them as minimally as we can.”
Most hedgehogs are in Burntisland Hedgehog Haven, which also has outdoor hutches for those nearing full-strength, for around three weeks.
When they are ready for release they will be returned to the place where they were found.
And seeing them scuttle off back into the undergrowth is the moment that makes it all worthwhile.
Sharon says: “It’s just amazing. It’s so rewarding to know that that hedgehog has survived.
“Most of them would have died if they had not come through here.”
Burntisland Hedgehog Haven is a finalist in the UK-wide Animal Star Awards which will be presented in November.
Along with three other hedgehog charities it operates the Scottish Hedgehog Rescue Alliance.
Details of how to support Burntisland Hedgehog Haven, how to report a poorly hedgehog and how to care for hedgehogs in your garden are available on the charity’s website.
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