Toni emailed us to let us know that her daughter Edie has raised over £1,000 to buy two Brinsea incubators for Pickering Hedgehog Rescue, We think that Edie and Toni are hedgehog heroes!
‘My daughter, Edie is 8 years old. In April, early on in lockdown, she discovered that we had a hedgehog visiting our garden. Edie started to put food out and we set up a garden camera, not long after, we were delighted to get some footage of a hedgehog pulling up a worm in the garden. Edie made a feeding station and we soon found that they were frequent visitors and Edie loves watching the footage. She found out more about hedgehogs, realised that they are endangered, so during Hedgehog Awareness Week in May she made a poster to tell people how to help hedgehogs and displayed it in the window and she asked her Dad to make a hedgehog house for the garden.
She wanted to do more to help. In June, after seeing a YouTube clip on how to make soap we had the idea to make some to sell to raise money for our local hedgehog rescue centre, Pickering Hedgehog Rescue. We bought some flower moulds as well as a hedgehog one and she started production in our kitchen. She made 6 to start with as she didn’t know how well they would sell and we advertised them on my Facebook page, she also did a promotional video which she wanted me to put on my Facebook page to advertise her soaps. (An added bonus was that we were covering lots of areas of her lockdown schoolwork while we were at it without Edie even realising!). We ended up getting orders for 90 soaps and production had to be halted several times while we waited for more soap base to arrive!!
Edie working hard for hedgehogs!
Deryn kindly invited Edie to see the hoglets that she had at the rescue to say thank you, so we had a socially distanced visit in June. As a result, her enthusiasm increased and she told Deryn she’d like to volunteer at the rescue. In July we delivered £222.50 to the rescue and helped for the afternoon, which she thoroughly enjoyed. Now she goes every Saturday to help out, sorting out the food and water, heating the heat pads, talking to the hedgehogs, sorting the newspapers etc. On 8th August she held a stall alongside the Hedgehog Rescue fundraising stall, selling her soaps. We delivered £209.63 to Deryn in August, then a further £106.50 in September.
Knowing that Deryn needed a new Brinsea incubator at the rescue for the hoglets and very ill hogs, Edie decided in August that she wanted to do one of the Children’s Challenges – a sponsored bike ride, to complete 35km (21.7 miles) in a month. Sponsors started to come in as she did her first 2 stages, first a 6.5 mile ride then an 8.5 mile ride. She set herself a challenge of getting to £1,000, I remember her saying if Captain Tom could do it then she could! She was already over halfway there! She did her final stage of her bike ride on 4 September completing 14.4 miles, bringing her total to 29.5 miles. On 10 September, having received over £500 in sponsorship she had reached her target! What an amazing achievement. She was delighted that she’d made enough to help Deryn get her new incubator and we are thrilled that she won’t just be getting one but two! Edie is still making soap!’
Toni Pape-Hodgson
‘I started the rescue three years ago. Initially in a small building with no insulation and one plug! I now have a big insulated extension, five Brinsea incubators, washer, dryer, microwaves for heat pads etc. Twenty volunteers help run the rescue; Edie is the youngest. She has seen first-hand how the Brinsea incubators really do make a huge difference in saving sick hedgehogs and the tiny hoglets. She loved watching the hoglets eating, sleeping and playing in the incubators as do all the volunteers. We have over 30 hedgehogs at the moment, nearly 150 have been released so far this year and that will increase in the next couple of weeks. We certainly wouldn’t have been able to save so many without the incubators.
We are a not for profit group, all that we have has either been donated, bought from funds donated by the public or raised by someone specifically for the rescue.’
Deryn Hagemann, Pickering Hedgehog Rescue
