SIR – Horace was very young and underweight. Born too long after the summer solstice, when food had been plentiful, he had no hope of putting on the body fat needed for winter survival.

Weeks earlier, he should have been snug in bed, fast asleep, yet after dark on a late November night, starving, and with the temperature at minus five degrees, he had set out on a hopeless search for food.

Soon, he could go no further. His limbs were icy cold, his muscles immobilised, his consciousness fading. Hypothermia would finish its lethal work within the next half hour.

He was probably unaware as he left the frozen ground and began a gentle ascent, as if some unseen entity had decreed that Death should not have him. About an hour later he awoke, on a soft surface, bathed in warmth and light. He cared nothing for his alien surroundings but resumed his search for food as if nothing had happened. He ate ravenously from the dish placed before him. He continues to do so and is growing well. We cannot know if he and his kind know happiness and contentment, but if they do, he is a happy and contented hedgehog.

Noel A Shaw, Bronte Old Road, Thornton