How a prickly visitor brings unexpected solace...
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It is the Winter Solstice and Sarah Sands is sitting by her father''s bedside, bracing herself for loss. What her father needs to do, she thinks, is conserve his energy - to hibernate like a hedgehog. When the hedgehog curls up in its bed of leaves, its heart rate slows, its body temperature drops and for months there it remains, hardly breathing at all.
A few days earlier, Sarah and her grandson had found a poorly hedgehog in the garden and taken it to the local hedgehog sanctuary. They named her Peggy, and her fate had become a matter of pressing concern. When death looms, it''s easier to talk about hedgehogs. There is something about these homely and yet mysterious creatures - prickly and defenceless, wild and tame - that, as Ted Hughes
