Beneath the Wheel

 

Stephen Alexander: Beneath the Wheel (2024) 

 

I.

 

If any image brutally encapsulates the idea of tragic irony, then it is surely the one above.

It shows a young hedgehog seeking refuge beneath a parked car in a residential area of east London in which almost every last garden and green open space has been concreted over and built upon, leaving this lovable little creature with nowhere to go, nowhere to hide. 

 

He might not know what fate has in store for him, but, sadly, we as viewers have a pretty good idea ... 

 

 

II. 

 

When I was a child in the 1970s, there were over 30 million hedgehogs snuffling around UK gardens; now it is believed there are probably no more than a million. Mostly this is due to the loss and fragmentation of habitat and the widespread use of pesticides. But many hedgehogs were (and still are) killed on the roads each year.   

 

In that same period, the UK human population has grown by ten million and the number of cars has increased from 27 million to 33 million. Personally, I would rather there were fewer people, fewer cars, and many, many more hedgehogs.

 

To paraphrase D. H. Lawrence: I think in this world there is room for me and a hedgehog. And I think how easily we might spare a million or two humans and never miss them. Yet what a gap in existence, the furry face of that cute little mammal with a pig-like snout. [1]

 

 

Notes

 

[1]  I'm paraphrasing the final verse of Lawrence's poem 'Mountain Lion'. See The Poems, ed. Christopher Pollnitz, (Cambridge University Press, 2013), p. 352.  

Save the Hedgehog

Photo: Tim Melling /Getty Images 

As a rule, I don't like the idea of saving anything, be it a whale, an immortal soul, or a sum of money. Whenever someone says we need to save this, that, or other, I always wonder from what and for what. It seems a slightly futile - if not ultimately a nonsensical - concept.

However, in the case of the hedgehog I'm willing to make an exception, because it's such an exceptional little beast; one of the earliest mammals and little changed in its spiny perfection for the last 15 million years. 

It also, of course, has a special place in the affections of the British; indeed, in a recent poll, it was voted our favourite wild species. But as author and journalist Tom Holland asks: If we love hedgehogs so much, why are we letting them vanish?

The answer, of course, is because we prefer to convert our gardens into driveways and eat McFlurries in a lifeless concrete world, sprayed with pesticide. We might anthropomorphically fantasise about Mrs Tiggy-Winkles, but we are supremely indifferent as a nation to the demise of the humble hedgehog, whose numbers have crashed dramatically over the past 20 years (down by over 30%).

Today, entire regions of the country are hedgehog-free zones. As Holland notes, an animal once ubiquitous in our fields, parks, and gardens is now facing extinction. It's a national shame: we encourage other peoples around the globe to protect their tigers, pandas, elephants and gorillas, but we can't even ensure the survival of our own small creatures. 

I wholeheartedly agree with Holland that we have an ethical duty to protect our wildlife; to be kind, while there is still time, as Larkin wrote in a mournful verse after accidently killing a poor hedgehog with his lawnmower.   

Notes

Tom Holland, 'If we love hedgehogs so much, why are we letting them vanish?', The Guardian (9 Sept 2018): click here to read online. 

Philip Larkin, 'The Mower', Collected Poems, ed. Anthony Thwaite, (Faber and Faber, 2003): click here to read on The Poetry Foundation website. 

For a related post to this one, on hedgehogs versus HS2, please click here.

Hedgehogs Versus HS2

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 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 ...

Notes

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.