Imir and Hedgehogs

I read a post Hedgehogs and Healing Hands at Hospital and thought about my experiences with these animals.

My first knowleges about them were that hedgehogs make great noise, if they come or live in the house, when they walk through the house in the night. Because they are nocturnal animals, sleep in the day and walk in the night. Top-top-top in the silence of the night.

Later there was information in all media telling hedgehogs are very dangerous animals because they are full of fleas and take grave diseases. Sincerely, this info sits so hard in my head till today that I could not see this photo I posted here from the site I linked in the top of this post. It made my flesh creep. The photo. I'm not afraid of them but they are something that takes illness with.

Near the fence where live my dogs there is a little oak. Under this oak lived hedgehogs. Today I don't know if they are their else but when Imir was alive they were our great problem. Because they walked inside the fence and Imir could not stand this violation of his territory. First of all he barked with all his force and dedication till he could take the trespasser in the mouth and kill him at the end.

This barking could last hours and hours. Imagin, that it began at 12 or 01 in the night. There was only one possibility to finish this concert: throw the hedgehog out of the fence. We begin to do it, but the hedgehog turned back 1-2 hours later. We tryed to throw him under the mountain. He needed a day to turn back and came for a walk to Imir next night.

If we were not very fast or the hedgehog was too young, Imir could kill him. How was it possible we don't know till today. Maybe with his great teeth he could arrive till important organs of those hedgehogs.

But they were infinite, those hedgehogs. So the solution we invented was to take a hedgehog, put him in a pail that night and carry him to the other side of our mountain next morning. Imagin that those hedgehogs disappeared from the pail till the morning. We truyed to cover the pail, but they are very powerful and could open the pail if covered without a great stoun over it.

At the end our strategy worked and we could sleep some years in holy peace.
Than Imir was dead.

Today I don't know if the hedgehogs live in that place else. Maybe nobody of them could find this territory. Not as rats that populate the holes under henhouse maximum after some months.
Hope we had not destroy the nice system.

Related stories:
Imir and Stassi, rottweiler-family in photos
The short story of Kotik
Where can you find Kotik on Christmas?
For a walk with Murka
Where our kittens sleep
Nobody wants to play with Matilda
Basja and the Moon
Weather forecast for the next days
Last time together
Cat's life
Kotik seems to be a winner