{"id":850698,"date":"2026-03-26T03:17:17","date_gmt":"2026-03-26T03:17:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/850698\/"},"modified":"2026-03-26T03:17:17","modified_gmt":"2026-03-26T03:17:17","slug":"dad-on-a-stroll-sees-puffballs-caught-in-barbed-wire-fence-and-runs-for-help","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/850698\/","title":{"rendered":"Dad On A Stroll Sees Puffballs Caught In Barbed Wire Fence And Runs For Help"},"content":{"rendered":"

Earlier this week, David Grant went for a walk with his 1-year-old son and a neighbor through the woods to collect golf balls. Grant\u2019s home is nestled behind the Leigh Golf Club in Culcheth, England, separated only by some wooden posts and barbed wire.<\/p>\n

Suddenly, Grant spotted a small puffball on the ground, caught in the treacherous fence. He recognized the quills instantly: a hedgehog.<\/p>\n

\"ALucy Grant<\/p>\n

He trekked back home to get his wife for help.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I got there, I noticed there was a second hedgehog curled up less than a meter away,\u201d Lucy Grant told The Dodo. \u201cI Googled \u2018hedgehog rescues nearby\u2019 whilst my husband went to get the wire cutters to free it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lucy Grant<\/p>\n

Irene Thompson at Lowton Hedgehog Rescue<\/a> advised the Grants to carefully cut the hedgehogs free from the fence, wrap them in towels and drive them the 10 minutes to her rescue.<\/p>\n

Seeing hedgehogs during the daytime is rare, according to The British Hedgehog Preservation Society<\/a>. They’re nocturnal, so Thompson guessed they’d been stuck overnight. Hedgehogs are also crucial parts of the ecosystem<\/a> and help maintain healthy soil.<\/p>\n

Sadly, in the past few years, hedgehog populations have declined in the UK, and the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources<\/a>\u00a0now considers them a near-threatened species.<\/p>\n

\"ALucy Grant<\/p>\n

Once in Thompson\u2019s care, she examined each animal closely. The second one, whom Lucy spotted, had a minor wound, which Thompson treated before sending him home to be released that night.<\/p>\n

The other was in rough shape.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe has a puncture to each side of his body,\u201d Thompson told The Dodo, \u201cwhere the prongs of the barbed wire pierced his flesh. This meant he was unable to move at all.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"ALucy Grant<\/p>\n

Luckily, thanks to the Grants\u2019 quick action, the hedgehog landed in the best place for recovery. Thompson removed a piece of barbed wire from the hedgehog\u2019s side, cleaned the injury and gave him medicine.<\/p>\n

\"ALowton Hedgehog Rescue<\/p>\n

For the next week or so, he\u2019ll get antibiotics and pain relief in Thompson\u2019s care, followed by any parasite treatment he might need. In an ode to what the little animal survived, Thompson named him Prong.<\/p>\n

\"ALowton Hedgehog Rescue<\/p>\n

\u201cSometimes trauma [or] stress can produce extra internal parasite activity,\u201d Thompson said. She\u2019ll test the hedgehog in the coming days to make sure the prickly animal is in the clear, but his wounds are already healing well.<\/p>\n

As for the Culcheth community, locals wrote on Facebook<\/a> that the golf club’s groundskeeper is looking at the fence to see what can be done so no wildlife gets injured in the future. <\/p>\n

\"Man<\/a>Man Hears Soft Squeaks Inside Dog Park And Finds A Wild Baby Clinging To Fence\u201cHe wouldn’t have survived much longer …”<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Earlier this week, David Grant went for a walk with his 1-year-old son and a neighbor through the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":850699,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[3847],"tags":[1716,204365,242806,167368,61840,70,1715,1713,16,15,1717,91952,6375],"class_list":["post-850698","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-daily-dodo","tag-hedgehog","tag-hedgehog-rescue","tag-hedgehogs","tag-sarah-ashley","tag-science","tag-standard","tag-the-dodo","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-wildlife","tag-wildlife-encounters","tag-wildlife-rescue"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116293314155793371","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/850698","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=850698"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/850698\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/850699"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=850698"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=850698"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=850698"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}