Oh help. There's a dead hedgehog in my pond.

[pgreasleybear]

Hello mammal forum. I've found my way to this website in distress after finding a dead hedgehog in my pond a few minutes ago. If I'm honest, I'm a pond novice; the pond is tiny and came with the house, and we don't do anything to maintain it. I hadn't given much thought to the concept that an animal like a hedgehog might drown in it, otherwise I would have sorted it out before. Not to mention we live in a very built up, residential area in the middle of Hillsborough, Sheffield, and I've never even seen frogs in the pond, much less small wildlife around the garden.

Anyway, I've just been out to water the tomatoes, and there he was. The poor little hodgeheg. I'm sorry to say he seems to have been in there for a good few days at least because the bit of him that's above the water is crawling with maggots and flies. So my question is this: what the HELL am I supposed to do about it? I'm very uneasy with having a rotting animal in the pond, especially with so many edible crops nearby - I'm concerned about the hygiene implications of dead-animal-soaked maggots and flies being around our tomato, squash and fruit plants, not to mention the ultimate effect on the pond itself. Also I'm feeling itchy just talking about it. Urgh.

Can anyone offer any advice? I'd really appreciate it, because there doesn't seem to be any solution to be found on the net. Please don't tell me I'm going to have to fish a bloated, rotting, maggoty corpse out of the pond....

[shenk1]

Try to put some sort of slope into the pond-pebble bank,flat stones for example- then anything that falls in can get out plus things like frogs ,toads or other animals can safely find their way in so its better all round.
Shame about the hedgie though.

Welcome to WAB and I'm sure some others will have more ideas

shenk1

[Kayleigh]

Well you will have to fish it out, you cant just leave it there to fester like you say its a heath hazard.
Either dig a big hole where you dont intend to grow crops or fish it out and put it in several plastic bags and put in in the bin.
Make sure you make a ramp or dangle something like coated wire mesh over the edge for them to climb out so this don't happen again.

[faz]

put some chicken wire over the pond to stop any more accidents butmake sure you leave a gap for the frogs etc to gain and exit your pond welome to WAB hope you enjoy it

[healfdan]

Simple solution; Extract the hedgehog using a bucket, dig a hole about 2 feet deep in the corner of your garden and deposit the corpse in the hole. Cover the body with bleach and a drop of jeyes fluid and fill the hole. Place a large potted plant on top to remind you not to plant veg there for a while. The smell of the bleach and disinfectant will deter foxes from digging it up.
Hedgehogs can swim, so I guess if it fell into your pond the sides were too steep for it to get out.
Healfdan

[Hedgehoggy]

How very sad. To prevent this from happening again, it’s imperative to provide an escape route from all ponds, for all wildlife. As has already been suggested, along with the advice from The British Hedgehog Preservation Society, the use of sloping slipways by means of half submerging bricks or rocks around the edges of ponds will provide a safe exit route. Or, a piece of chicken wire can be hung over the edge like a scrambling net which hedgehogs can use to climb up and out. Keep the pond level topped up so that hedgehogs can reach the wire. Hoglets will need a longer ramp than an adult hedgehog.

By providing a slipway in your pond, your garden birds would also be able to use your pond for bathing and drinking too.

Our UK hedgehogs are declining at an alarming rate, and according to some scientists, at the current rate of decline they will be extinct in the UK by 2025. We all need to do our bit to help halt this decline. See here for more ideas on how to make your garden a safe haven for wildlife:

British Hedgehog Preservation Society

P.S. Welcome to WAB, pgreasleybear - I hope your next post will be on a happier note!

[tobyy]

thats so sad. i have chicken wire hanging over my pond sides at a couple of points so that anything that might fall in will hopefully manage to find the wire and climb out.

[SheffieldLass]

Steeply sloping plastic pondliner is the worst thing for hedgehogs as they just keep sliding back into the pond, can't get a grip, so eventually drown. They don't seem to tell you this on the liner packaging though. My neighbour ended up drowning quite a few hedgehogs in his before eventually putting mesh over. And then the mesh got inadvertently knocked and 3 more adult hedgehogs drowned in it, in the space of about a week or two.

The prefabricated plastic ponds have always been fine with me as they have series of ledges and rough surfaces so things can get out without a problem. And I constructed a pond which was sheer on one side, but with a shallow marsh area on 3 sides, and never had a problem with that. If anything did ever fall in it must have always been able to swim and get out as there were no dead corpes or any bones on the bottom when I did the pond maintenance.

[Kayleigh]

I have ivy growing over my barrel pond and this acts as a ladder and looks good too so this could be an option.

[brendaward]

We found a couple of logs from the forest looked nice and helped the hedgehogs if they fell in and were useful for amphibians. The hedgehogs could put their claws into the bark to lever up. You could try leaving shallow bowl of water close to the pond to lessen the chance of them drinking the deeper water. I did have to get a hedgehog out of a drain last year, It had lifted the mesh covering it somehow, it must have been desperate for water to get into a smelly old drain. It survived. Try the log but clean any slime deposits off the log in and out of the water.