One of the most unlikely collisions in my world happened in early July when I had a phone call from a Rabbi, asking whether I would be happy with him mentioning me on ‘Thought for the Day’ – the religious slot on BBC Radio 4’s flagship Today Programme.
I first worked with Jonathan Wittenberg, Senior Rabbi of Masorti Judaism, during lockdown after he had asked me to talk about hedgehogs and conservation to members of his synagogue in an online event. Over the years I have done more; once he invited me to come and talk at the New North London Synagogue. There was to be a panel discussion – there were two rabbis, a bishop, and me. As we all walked there, I mentioned to one of the rabbis about me being there as the token atheist … they suggested that might not be quite the case!
Being outside my usual bubble is an important place to be – I already spend an inordinate amount of time in the chapels of Oxford, taking photographs of the choirs that offer up some of the best free music you can find, at evensong. In fact so much so that it has become one of my bubbles!
When I started writing my most recent narrative nonfiction, ‘Cull of the Wild, Killing in the Name of Conservation’, I was made very aware of the importance of, and challenges presented by, ‘bubbles’. That book had me spending a lot of time thinking about subjects that I found challenging – and engaging in conversations with people who held very different points of view.
I realised, over time, that not only did the bubbles help concentrate opinion – distilling out nuance – but they also created a lens through which we only saw a distorted version of people in other bubbles. Stepping outside is the only way for progress when things get complicated. And we would do well to remember the quote from Joseph Joubert, the 19th-century French moralist: ‘The aim of argument or discussion should not be victory, but progress’.
Jonathan’s Thought for the Day piece was a delight.
‘I love people, animals, birds, and trees,’ he said. ‘When I see how we kill one another and treat nature with contempt, how forests burn and waters are poisoned, my heart aches with fear and grief.’
He talked about my love for hedgehogs and went on to quote Malini Mehra, ‘In the big story of climate, love is underrated, that’s a mistake. People protest what they love. It’s the single most powerful driver of action.’
That is at the heart of a lot of the work I do – frequently when I am speaking at events I will use this quote from the late American writer, Stephen Jay Gould. He said, ‘We will not fight to save what we do not love’.
He was talking about conservation – about the need to get people engaged. ‘Liking’ is not enough, we need to love if we are going to fight. Now, the wildlife charities understand this, and have, for years, attempted to win us over into loving the nature we need to fight for through the use of the charismatic mega-fauna. In much the same way as the glossy wildlife programmes have tended towards the dramatic, the endangered and the unreachable.
It dawned on me, while out snuffling around in the Devon countryside, radio-tracking hedgehogs, that while I have had the pleasure of seeing some of these great beasts – lions, elephants, and leopards, wolves, whales, and dolphins – these have always been at a remove (for good reason!). Yet there I was, nose-to-nose with one of the most fascinating predators.
Nigel, he had a name by this point, was the hedgehog who generated my Damascene moment. He had stopped hunting the macro-invertebrates of the verge and paused, turning to me as I lay on the tarmac of the narrow lane – and our eyes met. Clearly he saw me, and I imagine remembered me (by this stage I was four weeks into living in a small caravan at the top of a field and was beginning to smell quite like my study animal). I felt seen, noticed, considered. And then he went on his way.
Simple as that. But it was enough – tipping the balance from liking to loving.
The realisation was that relying on the unreachable was never going to generate this sort of sense of connection. It was like relying on famous actors, models, singers, as the foundation for forming human relationships. It is never going to happen! If we are lucky we fall in love with the girl or boy next door – and the hedgehog is the animal equivalent. It is the animal with whom we actually have a chance!
Now that is not through any magic or ‘woo’ – it is down to their prickles. This defensive coat of modified hair means hedgehogs have lost the reactions that most animals exhibit when they meet us … hedgehogs first of all frown, bringing the spines over their eyes, ears, and nose. And then will roll into a ball if truly bothered. They have no fight or flight response. This presents us with a chance, that they will unroll, and take note of what they once considered a threat – and then, well, you have been ‘seen’ by a hedgehog, and maybe your heart will open to the chance of love, and with that, the strength to fight.
We desperately need more people to fight for nature – to speak up for nature. And we are not going to get that without a huge shift from liking to loving.
There is another aspect of the hedgehog that makes them so very important – and this I have dubbed the ‘Trojan Hedgehog’.
I do many talks each year – and while there are a few which pay well and have big audiences, most are evenings with the Women’s Institute, the Townswomen’s Guild, Gardening clubs, and the University of the 3rd Age – basically places which will offer a little money, but also the promise of cake.
Why do I keep on doing this? It certainly makes little economic sense.
The reason is because at heart I am a campaigner. I really think we can do and be better. But how do I get people to think about ideas that are confronting, or at first sight not very interesting? I do it with the Trojan Hedgehog!
The reason I get invited to talk to these groups is because people love hedgehogs. Seriously, in the UK every time there is a vote or a poll for the nation’s nature icon, or favourite wild animal, the hedgehog wins. Look in every garden centre gift shop, there is so much hedgehog tat iconography – cards, books, t-towels, lampshades – so many things (I have quite the collection at home too – please do not provide me with any more!).
I would not be invited to talk about macro-invertebrate decline, or the need to shift our diet from meat to plant, or transport infrastructure, or the National Planning Policy Framework – and I am sure they would run a mile if I suggested we talk about the necessity of dismantling industrial capitalism and finding a kinder alternative.
But that is what I talk about. Gently, lightheartedly, often generating laughs … but still sowing seeds of ideas that might not have come up before in polite conversation. I turn up offering a cute hedgehog – which when invited through the gates, gets all prickly!!
This is hardly the campaigning of the barricades, and there is little threat to myself beyond a few ‘tuts’ from those my jokes fail to reach. But it is still, I believe, valuable. A way of introducing probably fairly conservative audiences to ideas that might be new.
In my dreams I have an image of the massed ranks of the Women’s Institute, bolstered by all the other groups of good people, marching down Whitehall, with cakes and jam at the ready, to confront the establishment with their call for a better world. Their flag – a hedgehog of course.
I have odd dreams.
The importance of hedgehogs has really been under-appreciated. Even in their iconography (I did write a book about this!), they have tended to be bit-part players. Yes, there are ceramic hedgehogs from Ancient Egypt, yes the Ancient Greeks coined at least one aphorism about them – since you ask, it was Archilochus: ‘The fox knows many things, the hedgehog knows just one good thing’ which in turn spawned a veritable industry of philosophical thought (following on from Isaiah Berlin’s 1953 essay based on his interpretations of this idea and its application to the great thinkers of history). But actually, they have largely gone under the radar.
It was not until Beatrix Potter in 1905 published The Tale of Mrs Tiggy-Winkle, that things changed. Up until then most of the stories about hedgehogs had them cast as portents of doom, if at all. They were dismissed in the Celtic languages as the ‘ugly ones’. Yet now, well – they have become really quite elevated! So much so that when I wrote a feature for the Big Issue a while back, the cover had a hedgehog sitting on the globe, with the banner, ‘Save the Hedgehog, Save the World’.
So can hedgehogs really save the world? If we go back to the quote from ‘Thought for the Day’ from Malini Mehra, where she said, ‘People protest what they love. It’s the single most powerful driver of action’. Then I would say, yes! But – and this may lay me open to cries of unfaithfulness – it does not need to be a hedgehog. My heartfelt desire is that we all take a moment to find that gatekeeper into the mysteries of love. My way in came through a hedgehog – but I have met people who have been taken deep through orchids and otters, swifts and solitary bees.
Who has done it for you?
Hugh Warwick is an ecologist, author, public speaker and photographer. He also lectures in creative writing and runs courses on hedgehog conservation. His photography includes our annual Oxford Real Farming Conference. But hedgehogs are his specialty. His books include A Prickly Affair (its front cover includes an accolade from the late Ann Widdecombe), Cull of the Wild, Linescapes, and guides to hedgehogs and beavers. And he is the spokesperson for the British Hedgehog Preservation Society.
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