3 Replies to “Saturday cartoon by Ralph Underhill”

  1. “Bonfire night’s a national disgrace!” said Mr Spiny, the Chairhog of HOGBUBs, Hedgehogs Oppose Great Big Unchecked Bonfires, at a meeting to discuss hedgehog safety prior to hibernation.
    Mrs Tiggy-Winkle squeaked up “We feel so lucky to find a lovely, dry hibernaculum, tucked away underneath masses of twigs and piles of wood, but just as we nod off for the winter we are awoken by a tremendous heat and many of us are roasted to death before we can escape the burning issue.”
    “It’s just not fair!” exclaimed Mr Pricklepants. “We have to put up with so much human-made anti-hedgehog behaviour. We find ourselves consuming slug pellet-contaminated snails and slugs in gardens that are becoming less hedgehog friendly due to all those awful deckings.”
    “And it doesn’t end there” piped up one of HOGBUB’s committee members amongst the array. “If any of us are lucky enough to survive a winter’s hibernation without being prodded by a garden fork or dug out by an unsuspecting gardener, we are then at the mercy of those despicable four-wheeled metal machines that squash the guts out of us as we cross the roads on our first food forays of the new season.”
    Mr Spiny summed up the meeting with a request for all hedgehogs to get the message out to the Humans, “Please carefully re-make your bonfires prior to setting them alight. If you do come across a sleeping hedgehog then checkout the information on this website -http://www.sttiggywinkles.org.uk/top-navigation/wildlife-advice/hedgehog-fact-sheet.html . And next spring please don’t use poisonous slug pellets, there are effective alternative methods of controlling slugs and snails, you could even leave us to do the control for you! Drive carefully too, we don’t wear reflective spines.”
    The meeting finished with a grand feed of metaldehyde-free barbeskewed slugs, battered shell-free snails, earthworm and insect quiche, and woodmouse stew all swilled down with copious amounts of lovely, clean pond water.

  2. “They wouldn’t do this to us”.

    They couldn’t do this to us but you could hardly blame them if they wished they could.

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