Henrietta

I don't have a photograph, and I don't really know what she looks like, I certainly wouldn't recognise her if I passed her on the street, but I was delighted to return her to the 'wild' as the sun sank about an hour and a half ago. Mrs Gruff brought her home last Friday, after nursing her back to health. She had been brought in very cold, covered in slimy pond weed and breathing noisily, having been discovered, almost completely submerged, trapped between the surface of a pond and the net covering it. Only her paws, gripping the net, had saved her. Mrs Gruff treated her at home and fed her, and the discovery that she had escaped on Monday from the cat carrier she had been recovering in confirmed that she was well and truly on the mend. We thought she'd crawled out through the gap below the 'garage' doors but I was delighted to find, today, that she had made a home in one of the plastic bags holding bits and pieces in what we call the shed. She'd had to climb into a collapsible crate to do so, dragging nesting material with her. At about half past ten I went into the shed, taking care to make sure that I didn't step on anything living and breathing and I was delighted to see her, dimly, on the floor, having obviously just dined on the cat food Mrs Gruff had bought for her. I swept her up in two handfuls of the soiled shredded paper she had spread about the floor and took her outside where I deposited her gently on the 'lawn' and left her. The last I saw of her was the dark shape of a hedgehog taking advantage of the 'wild'. I left her within two feet of the worm rich spoil heaps my trenching efforts have created. I hope never to see her again, except at night and by accident (should you see a hedgehog in daylight you can be sure it is ill).

Good luck Henrietta.