How to Hibernate Like a Pro!

My neighbourhood hedgehog, Pog, went into hibernation during a cold snap on 12th November 2015.
Yesterday on the cold, wet blustery night of 7th of April 2016 she woke up!
Being a mild winter most people reported their hedgehogs hibernating late and getting up to feed during their hibernation.
Not Pog, I saw hide nor spine of her till now. I was worried, but it turns out she was just hibernating like a pro! :D

I have had my camera trap trained on the entrance to Pog's house for over a month hoping to capture the moment she shambled into the spring.
Either Pog moved house during the winter, my camera failed, or Pog can teleport because it failed to capture anything! Even my low tech hedgehog detectors (small sticks stuck in the ground in front of her house) hadn't been moved. (ps. I have reason to believe from other encounters that Pog can in fact teleport! She's one sneaky ninja hedgehog! XD)

I had been waiting months to see the food left out for her in the hedgehog restaurant disappear, so yesterday when I saw it had, I was super excited, and then super disappointed to find only a cat on the camera trap.

But it's not just disappearing food and camera traps that can prove a hedgehog has been, there's also poop! A quick look around the garden revealed 3 hedgehog poops, so I was assured of a spikey visitor.

Last night I put the camera in the hedgehog restaurant, and was rewarded with proof of my theory!
Check it out!




I'm super chuffed to see my spikey friend again! X3


There is a chance this isn't Pog, but I'm reasonably certain it is. Here's my evidence.
Pog is always a late visitor, she's a very shy hedgehog so 2:35am is exactly the time I'd expect her to turn up.
There were poops in the entrance and right outside her house. So I think she found room to dodge around the sticks as she exited.
She knew how to find and get into the hedgehog restaurant without needed a mealworm trail to help. My hedgehog restaurant has a switch back entrance to stop cats and it seems like she knew how to get in and was not at all nervous which a new hedgehog might have been.
My camera trap, while brilliant has been known to fail before so it may have failed in detecting her. The fact that it's last capture was 31st March and there was only one capture makes me think it failed. There are mice and cats always around there so it should have captured something else in the 6 days in between.

I'm not sure if Pog stayed in the garden overnight, I've put more low tech hedgehog detectors around Pog's house and the new hedgehog hut, so I hope she's stayed in one of them.

I'm looking forward to what new hedgehoggy things I can learn from Pog this year and going to work on making the garden an even better hedgehog home!

Welcome to Spring Pog!