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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsGermans complain they are being kept up at night by noisy hedgehogs having hours-long sex
German police being called out to loud night-time disturbances are having to deal with some prickly intruders - mating hedgehogs.
Emergency services across the country have received dozens of noise complaints via 110 (the German 999) in the belief that either their neighbours are having unacceptably loud sex or an animal has been seriously injured.
But increasingly more often, they are finding hedgehogs mating, and creating irritatingly loud sounds.
The nation-wide problem has even developed its own hashtag, #igelsex, which translates as 'hedgehog sex'.
In one case, responders to a primary school in Augsburg, near Munich, where suspicious sounds could be coming from a playground and a security light had been activated led to police waking up the caretaker to scour the site.
But after completing the search, officers only found a pair of mating hedgehogs, which were not disturbed.
In a different incident in Kamenz near Dresden, the local fire brigade had to use a hydraulic spreader to open a charity clothes collection bin only to find hedgehogs making the loud reported noises.
'The suspicious noises were soon pinned on a hedgehog couple in the midst of a mating ritual,' read a report on the incident.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7325149/Germans-complain-kept-night-noisy-hedgehogs-having-hours-long-sex.html?ito=social-twitter_mailonline
hunter
(38,326 posts)There's a reason I avoid television and radio news.
yortsed snacilbuper
(7,939 posts)mr_lebowski
(33,643 posts)Hey, don't blame me, there was no getting away from this joke ...
Haggis for Breakfast
(6,831 posts)mr_lebowski
(33,643 posts)Haggis for Breakfast
(6,831 posts)that DIDN'T include his real claim to fame.
BigmanPigman
(51,627 posts)They are LOUD! One was finally caught in a trap alive. It let stinky smells loose when it was captured. Yuk! We thought that opossums were mating until it was caught.
Yavin4
(35,445 posts)Sorry you weren't invited to the party.
RockRaven
(14,998 posts)They are complaining about some noise of unknown (to them) identity...
It just so happens that the identity of said noise happens to be hedgehog sex.
Hmmm...
"happens to be hedgehog sex" is a phrase I never would have predicted that I would type. Ever.
jberryhill
(62,444 posts)Seriously at least watch the part about Henry Kissinger....
dalton99a
(81,570 posts)muriel_volestrangler
(101,361 posts)The sound was quite like the Attenborough clip above, and it went on for some time, though when I went out I couldn't see anything. I wouldn't have mistook it for Germans, though
DFW
(54,436 posts)They must be some mutant species of mute hedgehogs, because they have never made a peep. The bullfrogs in the pond next door, however, make a racket so loud, I think there have been complaints lodged from the other side of the border with Holland, and that is 100 km from where we live.
Blue_true
(31,261 posts)Irritating, but regular and non threatening. I can live right beside a train track and after a couple of weeks, won't hear any train come past unless something unusual is happening with it.
I likely would be bothered by mating animals the first time I hear them, but then my brain catalogs the sounds and filter them out thereafter. The feature has been mostly a lifelong benefit because I can now sleep anywhere (after a particularly restless childhood where I stayed up late into the night thinking).