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| You'll need - a pallet (we got ours for about £3 from a local plant nursery. Just plain wood, with no paint or surface treatment that might be poisonous for hedgehogs) - a hammer - nails - cold water - a plaster - off-cuts of wood (or use a big pallet and cut it in half and use the bits from the extra half) - plastic sacks - paving slabs (not too big) |
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| About this size, in fact. |
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| First they took two plastic sacks, wrap the ends on one side and nail them onto the pallet as a roof. That will stop rainwater dripping inside. |
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| Now they found pieces of wood to fit three sides of the pallet and nailed them on VERY carefully. |
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| This piece of wood was perfect for the base. You'll even see it has breakfast in bed for its hoggy owner if you look closely enough |
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| The last side was going on when... |
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| OUCH! Poor Louis. Poor thumb. Put it in cold water. The bit of a log beside his hand made a great way of blocking half the entrance. You can see that in the finished house. |
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| With Louis taking a break (not literally, thank goodness, it was only bruised) it was Jake's chance to shine. The base wasn't quite big enough so we added another strip of wood. |
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| And when all the sides were done leaving an opening as a door, and the top and base were fixed firmly in place... the boys found a good spot away from the lawnmover and in between our garden and Tina's so she can see hoggies too. Actually her living room is closer than ours, which is right around the other side of the gallery AND the cottage. But the secret garden where we put it is far away from the road and that's more important than anything. |
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We made a base of slabs to help stop the wooden base from rotting. |
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| Six slabs fitted perfectly. |
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| Jake lowered the house on top, plastic roof up, naturally. Mind your fingers! |
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| We put some slabs on top so Mr Fox can't flip it over. And then covered it up with sticks and other stuff for extra insulation. Last of all we put old dry leaves, straw or strips of newspaper inside it as cosy bedding. |
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| Do you think any hedgehogs will find it while we're away? Can you? It's not in the woodpile because that's too close to a tree that's leaning a bit close to the gallery and needs to be cut down. (We've planted four trees, so don't worry). Thinking about it, that's rather an attractive pile og twigs and stuff. In fact, there could already be at least three families of hedgehogs already living in that pile, but we've never seen any. Fingers crossed! |
