Well squirrel and I went and resumed the search yesterday. I persuaded one of the younger deer to come and help. He was very concerned that his mum didn’t find out where he was as he didn’t think she would approve. He has never actually met hedgehog but he gets on really well with both squirrel and me and wanted to show his support. We were grateful for any help we could get. We went back to the exact spot we had left off from yesterday, I had marked it carefully in the usual way for a dog, and then we did our best to pick up hedgehog’s scent again. I could really have done with Matilda the cat coming to help but she wasn’t keen. We had a couple of false starts when we thought we had got hedgehog and then ended up in dead ends and had to go back and start again but then eventually we found it heading away from our wood and to the main road. Well I have been there with my mistress but we have never actually crossed the road. It is the road with lots of lorries and as hedgehog is quite slow we were worried in case he hadn’t made it. Fortunately there was no sign of any recent accidents so I told the others that at a road my mistress makes me sit down and look both ways to make sure it is safe to cross. So we all sat in a line. It must have looked quite funny a dog, a squirrel and a deer all sitting at the side of the road waiting for a gap in the traffic but eventually it was safe and we went over. My mistress would have been very proud of me. It took a while on the other side of the road to pick up the trail but we got it in the end. Deer had to go mid afternoon as he thought his mum would be worried but it was great to have had his help. We went back to the road with him to make sure he got across ok and then got back to work. We followed the scent a bit further but it was fading fast and we were struggling and tired. In the end we decided that we would be better to go and get as big a search party as we could muster and try again tomorrow. So we headed back for our wood and called on everyone we knew to see if they would help. We are meeting them on the edge of the wood today at about 10am, I am just hoping we are successful as I don’t think we will be able to go every day.
After the day I was worn out and needed something to cheer me up then in the evening my mistress caught me upstairs carrying a tree branch. She explained that I had my indoor toys for in the house and it was best that I left the trees outside so they would still be there for me to play with when I went out. It was several hours later that she was sitting on the settee and spotted the rest of the tree I had left on the other rug. By this time I had chopped it into small pieces to make it particularly difficult for her to put outside. Strangely she didn’t seem to find it very funny but it was just the sort of light relief I needed.