NOW the weather is warmer the hum of the strimmer can be heard again on a Sunday. This means trouble for hedgehogs.

With their habit of sleeping in patches of long grass below hedges, hedgehogs are often not seen until it is too late to prevent them being injured, and strimmer injuries really are terrible.

Please take a couple of minutes to check through the grass before you start to strim; you may save yourself and a hedgehog a lot of misery.

A H COLES, British Hedgehog Preservation Society, Knowbury House, Shropshire, SY8 3LQ.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.