KS2 English — Reading Comprehension & Writing

The Night Shift

Everybody thinks hedgehogs are slow. They think this because they have only ever seen one in the daytime, curled into a ball at the bottom of a garden, refusing to do anything at all. And it is true that a hedgehog in the daytime is not very impressive. It is a spiky football with a nose.

But you are looking at the wrong shift.

At about nine o'clock at night, something changes. The ball uncurls. A snout appears, then four surprisingly long legs, and the hedgehog stands up — properly up, higher than you would think possible — and sets off.

And then it runs.

A hedgehog can travel two miles in a single night. Two miles. For an animal the size of a grapefruit, that is like a person walking from London to Brighton before breakfast. It will cross gardens, squeeze under fences, climb walls if it has to, and it will do all of this in almost total darkness, because a hedgehog's eyes are poor and it barely uses them.

Instead it uses its nose, which is extraordinary, and its ears, which are better than yours.

By four in the morning it will have eaten around a hundred and fifty insects, visited a dozen gardens, and got into at least one argument. Then it will find somewhere dark, curl up, and go back to being a spiky football until the sun goes down again.

So the next time somebody tells you hedgehogs are slow, you can tell them the truth. They are not slow. You are just asleep.

Why We Do Not Sell Marvin

People ask, about once a fortnight, whether Marvin is for sale.

Marvin is an Aldabra giant tortoise. He weighs ninety-one kilograms — about the same as a very large man — and he is somewhere between sixty and eighty years old, though nobody is certain, because he arrived before anyone was keeping proper records.

The people who ask are not being unkind. They have met him, they have been allowed to touch the ridged dome of his shell, and they have watched him work his way through a cabbage with the unhurried concentration of somebody doing a crossword. They want one. I understand entirely.

But there are three reasons the answer is always no.

The first is that he would outlive you. Aldabra tortoises regularly reach a hundred and fifty. If you bought Marvin tomorrow, you would need to name him in your will, and so would whoever inherited him. He is not a pet. He is a family heirloom that eats.

The second is that he is enormous, and enormous animals need enormous rooms. In winter Marvin must be kept above eighteen degrees, indoors, in a space he can actually walk about in. Most people picture a tortoise in a cardboard box. Marvin requires something closer to a garage, heated day and night, for six months of the year.

The third reason is the important one. Marvin knows this place. He knows where the sun falls at eleven o'clock in the morning, and he goes there. He knows the sound of the wheelbarrow and he knows what it usually means. He has particular corners of the paddock he prefers and particular ones he ignores, and he has had sixty years to work all of this out.

Move him, and none of it comes with him.

He would survive. Tortoises are tough, and he would eat and sleep and carry on. But he would spend a very long time learning a new garden, and he does not have as many years spare as people assume.

So no. Marvin is not for sale. You are, however, very welcome to come and sit with him. He will not do anything interesting. That is rather the point.

"The problem was never keeping reptiles"

I've kept reptiles for eleven years and I'm tired of being told I shouldn't.

Every time somebody posts a photo of their bearded dragon, three people appear to explain that wild animals belong in the wild. Fine. Except my dragon isn't wild. She was bred in captivity, her parents were bred in captivity, and she has never seen Australia and never will. Releasing her into the wild wouldn't be freeing her. It would be killing her.

What people actually mean is that they don't like the idea. And I understand the instinct, but it isn't an argument.

Here is what is true. Kept badly, a reptile suffers enormously — wrong temperature, wrong size enclosure, no UVB, and it declines slowly and invisibly over years. That happens constantly and it is a genuine scandal.

But kept properly, a captive-bred reptile lives longer than a wild one, eats better, never faces a predator and receives veterinary care. My dragon is nine. In Australia she would have been lucky to reach six.

The problem was never keeping reptiles. The problem is keeping them badly, and the answer to that is better information, not fewer keepers.

"Why is it being bred at all?"

Every year, thousands of exotic animals are surrendered, abandoned or found dead in British homes.

The pattern is depressingly consistent. An animal is bought on impulse, often after being seen online. The buyer has no idea of the cost, the lifespan, or the specialist care required. Within a year, the novelty has worn off and the animal is advertised for free, passed on, or quietly allowed to die.

Defenders of the trade point out that captive-bred animals cannot be released and are better off than wild ones. This is true of the well-kept minority. It says nothing about the majority.

We would ask a simple question: if the animal cannot be returned to the wild, and most owners cannot meet its needs, why is it being bred at all?

The reptile trade in this country is worth millions of pounds. It exists because animals are bred to be sold, not because animals need homes. Every well-cared-for bearded dragon in a properly heated vivarium exists alongside a great many that do not.

We are not asking for a ban. We are asking for licensing, for mandatory care information at the point of sale, and for a serious conversation about whether an animal that requires this much specialist knowledge should be available to anyone with fifty pounds.