Hedgehog: Photo by Gillian Day
According to the Irish poet Paul Muldoon, the hedgehog - a once familiar creature found in parks and gardens all over the UK, but now in serious decline due to destruction of habitat - is a secretive animal that gives nothing away and likes to keep itself to itself.
We wonder, he says, what a hedgehog has to hide; why it refuses to share its knowledge of the undergrowth; why it so distrusts mankind:
We wonder, he says, what a hedgehog has to hide; why it refuses to share its knowledge of the undergrowth; why it so distrusts mankind:
We forget the god
Under this crown of thorns.
We forget that never again
Will a god trust in the world.
And whether we choose to think of the prickly otherness of the hedgehog in terms of divinity or in the natural language of species difference, the fact is this shy little nocturnal slug-eater is right to distrust (and despise) humanity.
For despite our pretended love for all things bright and beautiful / all creatures great and small, we laugh as they are killed beneath the wheels of our vehicles, happily concrete over the spaces in which they used to find food and shelter, and watch with savage indifference as they are pushed into extinction.
Thus it is that a House of Lords Select Committee recently ruled in favour of HS2's proposal to build a lorry park in an area that is home to the last remaining hedgehog stronghold in London. There are thought to be between 20 and 25 adults living in the Regent's Park site (right next to the Zoo) and they produced a litter of 17 young in the autumn of 2017.
But the HS2 bosses don't care. And neither do the politicians who don't want any disruption to their £57 billion rail network. Alternative options were given very little serious consideration and so the future of this long established population has been unnecessarily compromised in the name of progress, profit, and improved transport links.
Shame on all those involved in this decision ...
NotesUnder this crown of thorns.
We forget that never again
Will a god trust in the world.
And whether we choose to think of the prickly otherness of the hedgehog in terms of divinity or in the natural language of species difference, the fact is this shy little nocturnal slug-eater is right to distrust (and despise) humanity.
For despite our pretended love for all things bright and beautiful / all creatures great and small, we laugh as they are killed beneath the wheels of our vehicles, happily concrete over the spaces in which they used to find food and shelter, and watch with savage indifference as they are pushed into extinction.
Thus it is that a House of Lords Select Committee recently ruled in favour of HS2's proposal to build a lorry park in an area that is home to the last remaining hedgehog stronghold in London. There are thought to be between 20 and 25 adults living in the Regent's Park site (right next to the Zoo) and they produced a litter of 17 young in the autumn of 2017.
But the HS2 bosses don't care. And neither do the politicians who don't want any disruption to their £57 billion rail network. Alternative options were given very little serious consideration and so the future of this long established population has been unnecessarily compromised in the name of progress, profit, and improved transport links.
Shame on all those involved in this decision ...
Paul Muldoon, 'Hedgehog', Poems 1968-1998, (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2001). Click here to read on the Poetry Foundation website.
Thanks to Thomas Bonneville for bringing this story to my attention.
