2023-08-15 17:56:51
Verden – In Verden, it was a male hedgehog whose front leg was severed and his face was cut up. Probably from a brush cutter.
Just a day or two later, a pregnant female in Scheeßel was apparently the victim of a robotic lawnmower. Both animals must have suffered unbelievably before finders brought them to the “Hedgehog Care Rotenburg” association. There they could only be relieved of their pain.
A front leg is torn off, the snout is badly injured – probably by a brush cutter
Photo: Wiebke Bruns
“It would have been so easy to prevent if you had only looked under the bush,” says Merwel Otto-Link from the hedgehog care center. “Hedgehogs don’t scream,” she knows. You suffer in silence. If the polluter is gone, they drag themselves around. “Unthinkable for us humans, but it can still be one or two kilometers.”
Apparently the hedgehog could no longer walk on Friedrichstrasse in Verden. A driver spotted him in the gutter around 6 a.m. The finder brought the bleeding animal to her husband, who then drove straight to Rotenburg. Only then did the extent of the injuries become apparent. “The left front leg was severed and the face cut away in half. Classic gardening injuries,” says Merwel Otto-Link. Unfortunately, she has seen this far too often.
Danger from robotic lawnmowers
Two days later the next case: an approximately one-year-old female hedgehog from Scheeßel.
The face and tongue were cut and here, too, the volunteers could not do more than put the animal out of its suffering. At least five unborn babies died with the future hedgehog mom. This was shown to them by an examination with their own ultrasound device. “They would have been born in about a week,” estimates the experienced animal rights activist.
Hedgehogs usually don’t hide deep in the bush
Photo: Wiebke Bruns
It should actually be known by now how dangerous robot lawn mowers are. But while some enjoy their beautiful garden, the Rotenburg woman and her helpers take care of the victims of the well-tended greenery.
“If there are robotic lawnmowers, then only between 11 a.m. and 3 p.m.,” she appeals. Hedgehogs are rarely out there. However, this is the time when the first babies are born. “Once they fledge and leave the nest, the little ones don’t stand a chance,” she explains.
The problem, no matter whether it is a robotic lawnmower, brush cutter or brush cutter, is that it is used in places that are not visible. But hedgehogs would not always hide deep under a bush.
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Right now, in the mating season, the males in particular are so exhausted in the morning looking for food and females that they just barely lie down under overhanging bushes. I’m careful, I hear her again and again, says the woman from Rotenburg, but nobody notices when they’ve injured an animal.
The foster home has already taken in more than 360 hedgehogs in its two stations in Rotenburg and Bremen this year. Among them “many injured, but also emaciated animals”.
“It’s misery,” says the hedgehog rescuer. But when it comes to cruelty, unfortunately everything can still be topped, the Rotenburg native notes with a look at the hedgehog female from Scheeßel. “It was her first pregnancy. And her last.”
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