Merdalf

Creative - The One Hour Project

[Hedgehog Cabin @HedgehogCabin]

I'm getting lots of calls from people who have decided to clean out their garage, outbuilding or shed and have found a 'sleeping' hedgehog.
Firstly, please leave them there.
Put everything back as it was, as gently and quietly as possible, and walk away.
Whatever you wanted to do that day is not worth killing a precious endangered animal for.
Because of the false autumn this year (the drought traumatised trees into dropping their leaves early, as a survival tactic, and the smell of those decaying leaves is an 'autumn is here' trigger for hedgehogs), a lot are hibernating early.

Hibernation isn't a sleep.
It's a lowered metabolism.
The heartbeat is lowered dramatically from 190 beats per minute to around 15.
A breath is taken only once every few minutes.
Their body temperature is dropped from 35C to around 5C.
Systems not needed for life are shut down.
A hibernating hedgehog burns just 1 calorie per day.
Isn't that incredible?
They still have a sleeping and waking cycle, and are perfectly aware and can hear, but are stiff, rigid, and cannot move.
Trapped and helpless in that near-death state.

It takes weeks of preparation to achieve this incredible transformation.
It cannot be instantly undone.
Even the fastest rising, by a young fit hedgehog, takes about 12 hours, before the heart is beating fast enough and there's enough oxygen in the bloodstream to allow muscles to move again.

If a hedgehog in a state of hibernation is terrified (by being disturbed by a human) and is panicked into trying to rise too fast, the strain can be too much for him and he'll have a heart attack.

It's so dangerous to disturb them that it's actually against the law - and goodness knows our wildlife have few enough laws protecting them.
But leaving them in peace is more than obeying the law.
It's human kindness.
After destroying their own natural habitat, it’s the least we can do - to allow them safe passage through the winter, in whatever space of ours they choose to inhabit.
And they chose to inhabit your space because it was undisturbed.
Unused.
Just as we can smell when a house is empty, hedgehogs can smell when something has lain undisturbed - be it a roll of carpet, a bag of old clothes, or a sack of compost.
Undisturbed means safety to a desperate animal.
These poor displaced gentle creatures take the chance that small space will stay undisturbed, long enough for them to survive winter.

So if you're having a clear out and find a hedgehog please let them stay in peace, undisturbed.
Put any covering back just how you found it.
Please don't be tempted to add to it, to 'make them more comfy'. 🥰
It's lovely that you feel that way, but the hedgehog will just see it as a predator making their nest unsafe.
If there's no access to the building that you know of, please leave the door open a little, or make a cat-flap size hole in the door.
And leave a clean dish of water outside the building, and a dish of dry cat or dog food outside in the evenings ( a complete food that has meat as the first listed ingredient).
If they are too frightened to continue hibernating there, they will use up a great deal of precious stored energy moving on, and will need to replenish that.
And then enjoy the rare privilege, that this precious endangered wild animal trusted you and your garden to be at his most vulnerable.❤️

[Merdalf @2poor4justice]

@GeorginaMangan4 An unfortunate response…specsavers springs to mind…

[Tiger @tiger26931]

Maybe it’s not their world interrupting ours…Maybe it’s our roads cutting through theirs.
We’re just visitors in places that have been home long before us.
Drive a little slower.
Look a little closer.
Respect what was here first.

[Merdalf @2poor4justice]

@TG_desk69 🇬🇧🇮🇪🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿🇺🇸

[Jo Jo @joannew0112]

@ChrissieHynde https://t.co/JuKKbVPcGv

[PETA @peta]

Animal-free science isn't a dream for the future—it's already here 👏

Human-relevant methods exist. They're faster, superior, plus they don't force animals to suffer in laboratories.

[PROTECT ALL WILDLIFE @Protect_Wldlife]

PLEASE RT…..

🚨WITNESS APPEAL – TEIGNMOUTH / SHALDON BEACH 🚨

This took place earlier today (27th July) at Shaldon Beach, Teignmouth, Devon.

A member of the public reports seeing the man in the photo below pick up his dog and throw him against a stone wall multiple times. The witness states he then pinned the dog to the ground and punched him repeatedly, while the woman with him stood by and watched.

According to the witness, this happened because the dog didn’t recall immediately and the man got his jeans wet retrieving him.

If you recognise this man or the woman with him, please get in touch with the OP via the link below. .

😡 Please share — this dog needs to be protected.

https://t.co/hkVcKyI8JB

[Hedgehog Cabin @HedgehogCabin]

As we enter yet another week of drought conditions please, I beg you, put out water for the animals.
Our nocturnal wildlife is dying of thirst.
A terrible, painful way to die.
And you hold the solution, the cure.
A turn of the tap will save a life.🚰
So get out your casserole pot lids, your flan dishes, your old baking trays - anything that is shallow and wide and not easily tipped.
It doesn't matter what it looks like, this is an emergency.
Put them out at dusk, front and back garden.
Your local charity shop will have loads of suitable water dishes - so with one simple act of kindness you can benefit so many.🥰
Keep them clean.
Keep them full.
Keep them coming.
Please share this to save a life today.

[PETA @peta]

Animals are dying in experiments. Humans are still waiting for cures 💔
Experiments on animals aren’t the solution. They fail because other animals’ bodies don’t accurately predict what happens in ours.

[Steve Perkins @Perky_43]

🚨 STOLEN GOATS – HEARTBREAKING THEFT IN RAINHAM, EAST LONDON 🚨

Two much‑loved Golden Guernsey goats — Maggie and Maple — were snatched overnight from Peel Stable, Mereborough Road, #rainham, sometime between 9pm Saturday 18 July and 7.30am Sunday 19 July.

A 40–50cm hole was cut through the barbed‑wire fence, then tied back to hide it.

Someone chased these goats around their field, dragged them through that hole, and took them.

Maple suffers from serious seizures and has only just finished medication. Without the right care, she is at real risk.

Their owner is devastated.

The goats were bottle‑fed from 10 weeks old, raised alongside the family’s horses, pony, ducks, chickens, cats, dogs — they are family, not livestock.

If you live near Mereborough Road, Rainham, check your CCTV, Ring doorbells, dashcams, or anything that might show suspicious activity between 9pm Saturday and 7.30am Sunday.

A £1,000 reward is being offered for information that leads to their safe return.

📩 Contact: [email protected]
📞 Or report directly to Kent Police by calling 01634 792209, and quoting 19-1342.

Earlier this month, staff at Buttercups Sanctuary for Goats told local paper KentOnline how they had been left heartbroken after Taco the goat was stolen overnight.

CCTV showed four men stealing him from the site in Boughton Monchelsea, near Maidstone, on July 4.

Seven baby goats were also stolen from their pen at Christmas Tree Farm in Cudham Road, Downe, on June 23. The animals were about four to five weeks old at the time.

🐐 PLEASE SHARE THIS POST

https://t.co/QNikMAK8mP

See also: https://t.co/VhVeCtFN5D

Source UKACF.

[PROTECT ALL WILDLIFE @Protect_Wldlife]

🦔 𝐘𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐠𝐚𝐫𝐝𝐞𝐧 𝐢𝐬 𝐞𝐢𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐫 𝐩𝐚𝐫𝐭 𝐨𝐟 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐛𝐥𝐞𝐦 𝐨𝐫 𝐩𝐚𝐫𝐭 𝐨𝐟 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐬𝐨𝐥𝐮𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧. 𝐓𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐞 𝐢𝐬 𝐧𝐨 𝐢𝐧 𝐛𝐞𝐭𝐰𝐞𝐞𝐧 🦔

Watch this mother Hedgehog and her baby drink from a simple bowl of water. Now imagine a summer without it.

We've paved, fenced and tidied our gardens until there's nowhere left for the small lives that used to share them. No gaps to pass through. No shelter. And on a hot day, not a single drop to drink.

𝐒𝐨 𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐞'𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐠𝐨𝐨𝐝 𝐧𝐞𝐰𝐬
Your garden can flip from problem to solution faster than almost anything else you own. Put out a shallow bowl of water with a stone in it so nothing drowns.

Cut a Hedgehog-sized hole in the fence. Let a corner grow wild. Plant native flowers and a few berrying shrubs.

They may be a mall acts, but multiply them across a street, a neighbourhood, a country, and you've built a living network no nature reserve could match.

#WildlifePhotography #Hedgehog 🦔

🎦 Credit: Unknown (DM for credit).

[PROTECT ALL WILDLIFE @Protect_Wldlife]

BREAKING: Undercover footage shows the nightmarish warehouse cells where NYC carriage horses are trapped in deplorable conditions when not in dangerous NYC traffic.

These poor animals have a HORRIFIC LIFE of walking the busy streets , in and out of congested traffic in hot and cold temperatures. These horses NEVER touch grass, never graze in pastures and no socialization with other horses .

They have NO pasture for grazing and interacting with other horses as herd animals NEED to be healthy and they are denied proper veterinary care.

THIS HAS TO STOP. TAKE ACTION BELOW TO END THIS ABUSE.

Everyone can call NYC Council Health Committee Chair Lynn Schulman at 718.544.8800 and press 0 to leave a message to ask her to cosponsor and fast- track #RydersLaw Intro 967 to end this criminal horse abuse!

NEW YORKERS: please make a quick call or send an email to your own New York City COUNCIL MEMBER urging them to POST sponsor and pass intro 967,
#RydersLaw.

#CentralPark #BanHorseCarriages #centralparkcarriagerides #nychorses #nyctourism #CentralPark #BanHorseCarriages #NYClass
#centralparkcarriagerides #nychorses #nyctourism #RydersLaw

🎦 Credit: Unbridled Heroes.

[leilani dowding 🌸🚜 ☮️ @LeilaniDowding]

Evil
Psychopath

I couldn’t even watch the entire thing. How can anyone do this. I pray karma catches up to him

[PROTECT ALL WILDLIFE @Protect_Wldlife]

Help Find This Scumbag!

This man brutally and repeatedly smashed a Seagull against the wall of the Harbour View Cafe in Truro because it tried to steal some food. He then stuffed the Seagull through the fence onto the road where if floundered with two broken wings.

This was in front of numerous people and children who were hugely upset.

[Hedgehog Cabin @HedgehogCabin]

The ground has been baked so dry and rock hard that the Red Kites are coming down in my garden to eat the leftover cat food I put out for the foxes.
Earthworms and beetles make up a major part of a red kite's diet and, just like our hedgehogs, they can starve in prolonged hot dry weather. Their natural prey is inaccessible, as it has burrowed deep down into the earth, where the soil is still moist.
Our hedgehogs are now starving too, so as well as clean water, please put out a dish of dry cat/kitten food each evening.
Any type or flavour, as long as meat is the first listed ingredient.
Thank you.❤️

[Massimo @Rainmaker1973]

Utah built a wildlife overpass over one of their major highways and it’s saved the lives so many animals and humans.

[📹 utahtransportation]

[Hedgehog Cabin @HedgehogCabin]

Some kind organisations are posting messages urging people to leave out water for our precious wildlife in this hot dry weather, which is brilliant, thank you.
But this rumour doing the rounds that hedgehog mums abandon their nursing babies is utter nonsense.
Hedgehog mums are the most patient, loving parents you can imagine.
They are tightly bonded and would NEVER willingly abandon their babies.
But they die.
They die because lactation places a massive continuous drain on a mother's water reserves.
If she is deprived of water, her body is forced to pull from its own tissues and blood supply to maintain milk production, resulting in rapid blood volume depletion and thickening of the blood.
Producing milk requires a massive amount of calories and water.
If resources are scarce, the mother's body goes into a negative energy balance, which drastically accelerates the depletion of her internal reserves.
But they stay with their babies, protecting them, loving them, literally giving them their last drop of life.
The starving dehydrated babies eventually stagger out of the maternity nest, instinctively seeking sustenance.
By the time they are found by humans they are so near death and their dehydration so extreme that only subcutaneous fluids from an experienced rescue can save them.
All this heartbreak and tragedy can be avoided, and rescues freed from bed-blocking babies, if only everyone simply puts out a dish of water.
Right now.
And tonight.
Front and back.
Under cover in the shade, if possible.
A turn of the tap can save so many lives.❤️

[Steve Perkins @Perky_43]

🚨 Yet more feral kids killing wildlife - if they're your kids, take a good long look at yourself.

The little hedgehog that was being kicked around like a football by kids in Maidstone hasn't been doing well.

Even though he was taken to a vet by a DPD driver before he was transferred here, a further and thorough assessment by our vet under sedation today found that his upper palate had been broken and his liver lacerated from the impact of the blunt force trauma inflicted.

He was helped across the rainbow bridge.

It's not often I cry even though I see some awful injuries and unimaginable suffering on a regular basis but this little one was a baby and had his life intentionally kicked out of him before he had even had a chance to live one. By children. 💔

Thorne Hedgehog Rescue.

[PROTECT ALL WILDLIFE @Protect_Wldlife]

Animals are not ours to use and abuse!

Look at the baby tethered to keep her apart from her mother who is restricted with shackles around her feet.

The ‘man’ carries a bull hook to ensure the Elephants comply 😡.

Tourists ~ #DontBuyATicket 🎟️ EVER!! 🚫