Damien Enright: Crowing on about animals with human characteristics

Yesterday, my wife and I found a dead hedgehog on the road. It’s a long time since I’ve seen a hedgehog, dead or alive. We used to regularly see squashed hedgehogs on roads, feel sorry for them and grieve their loss to the local wildlife chain. They eat pests, and badgers eat them. They are most useful in gardens because they consume slugs which, as we know, consume our seedlings.

An Irish version of El Toro de España that stands in silhouetted cut-outs on Spanish hill tops. It’s without the dangerous horns – it’s a friendlier bull, a toro simpatico, like the one in my story.