Hedgehogs have awakened in Russia, and they pose a serious threat.

Hedgehogs in the Moscow region have emerged from their winter hibernation, as reported by the Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Protection of Moscow. And it's still January! The cause, of course, is the unusually warm weather: the animals have decided that spring has arrived.

LIKE GHOSTS

Especially disturbed are those hedgehogs whose winter shelters have been flooded by melting snow. They can't sleep in damp conditions, so they wander around like ghosts.

Meanwhile, the weather remains extremely unstable. For several days, the Moscow region experienced quite severe frosts, dropping to minus six degrees. The capital, of course, was warmer. Prior to this, the January sun and warm cold masses virtually stripped the ground of its snow cover. Streams flowed vigorously, filling up as if during a flood. While in some parts of the Moscow region there are still significant areas and fields covered with dense, almost frozen snow, in Moscow's parks, its existence has long been forgotten.

Snow is also scarce in rural areas. It holds on better in forests and on the northern slopes of ravines, but fields are completely free of it.

We describe this scene in detail to illustrate how challenging it is for these small and charming creatures.

Muscovites have started finding hedgehogs and bringing them to ecologists

Photo: Vladimir VELENGURIN. Go to the Photo Bank of KP

JUST PASS BY

Muscovites have begun to find hedgehogs and bring them to ecologists: help us! – they say at the department. But they are wasting their time.

Hedgehogs are still half-asleep. They have been disturbed and are now searching for new shelter. If left alone, they will settle down again and fall asleep with the next frost. If picked up and taken somewhere, they will fully wake up and may not fall asleep again.

And the weather can still vary greatly. Although forecasters promise anomalous warmth of up to five degrees for the coming days, who knows what February and March will bring! So, for the hedgehogs, sleeping is literally a matter of life and death. If you see one crawling and it is not in immediate danger (like from a highway), do nothing.

To be fair, this problem is primarily acute for residents of Moscow (parks) and nearby regions. More than 20-30 km from the capital, it is still quite harsh, and no one has yet seen wandering hedgehogs.

WEATHER ANOMALIES

January in the Moscow region has become the warmest since the 19th century. Final results have not yet been compiled, meteorologists say, but it will likely rank among the top five hottest Januarys since 1879.

The frosts mentioned, down to minus five or six degrees, were indeed the coldest moments of the month. We could have expected deep freezes during the “Epiphany frosts”! But we didn't see them. As a result, in some places, traditional ice bathing did not take place, mainly where it is impossible to set up stationary bridges and one has to chop a hole in the ice.

According to meteorologists (though forecasts vary), warmth is expected to last at least until the end of April. And then spring will arrive, and who can predict what it will bring. Weather conditions in Moscow now feel more like March. The first to awaken are the spiders, which usually appear on melting snow in March. Unlike hedgehogs, they are abundant and hard to miss.

Other signs of spring include the sharp calls of owls, more typical for March. Those living in the countryside, near dense forests, can “enjoy” these sounds.

The cause of the warming could be either anomalously high solar activity or meteorological phenomena directly related to air circulation. Weather remains a mysterious subject; our predictions are not very reliable, and our explanations for such occurrences are no better.

Remember that hedgehogs should not be fed milk.

Photo: Ivan VISLOV. Go to the Photo Bank of KP

IMPORTANT

Experts remind that it is best not to handle hedgehogs, not only during this delicate time but at all times. Hedgehogs are the sanitation workers of the forest, feeding on various small creatures, and without them, nature would be overrun by less pleasant beings. Unfortunately, these creatures are prone to various diseases and can carry many parasites. By consuming these, hedgehogs can become infected. Their bodies are designed to cope with this. However, if you handle a hedgehog and are unlucky, you might get scratched. Or simply dirt from your hands may enter your system, leading to various issues. Therefore, biologists are warning parents sending their children to the dacha to let them study nature through some other example. This year, it seems, we have to remind them even in winter, not just in summer.