My boyfriend, the hedgehog hero

‘I’m making a hedgehog rescue ladder,’ said the builder boyfriend, who was on his knees in the farmyard, drilling a series of mini rungs into place on two mini rails.

The builder boyfriend keeps going to check but the hedgehog seems very happy, snoozing away in its comfy box

I should have known. Why did I even ask? Of course he was making a hedgehog rescue ladder. The BB doesn’t like to admit it, but beneath the gruff exterior he has such a soft spot for all living creatures that he often bends down to pick up stranded worms from pavements and roads. It is a charming contradiction in his otherwise macho personality, even though worm rescue can be a pain when you are trying to go for a walk.

I can’t explain it quite, because he is very pragmatic about animals otherwise. When he sees a creature in trouble, however, he makes a personal connection to it. ‘You really empathise with worms, don’t you?’ I once said to him, as we were walking a track through common land and we had to stop twice for him to pick up two slitherers he felt had dubious chances unless he deposited them by hand into the safety of some earth.

‘It’s good karma,’ he always announces, as he sets the worm down.

He has a bugbear about vegans not caring about ‘the millions of invertebrates slaughtered in crop production’ as well as ‘all those thousands of crop rats’. He likes to like creatures no one else bothers to like, as well as those who are up against it. He likes to side with the underdog, or indeed the under-hedgehog.

So when I found him in the yard making a hedgehog rescue ladder it didn’t surprise me. He had found this hedgehog trapped under the cattle grid at the bottom of our drive.