Gone Native

I'm afraid I have gone native. The proof? It's hard to admit, especially since some of my foodie friends will read this.

I'll whisper it.

I love mushy peas.

London Tornado...and Hedgehogs

I had been planning for a few days to mention this little sign of global warming: hedgehogs that appear to be drunk.

A story on BBC Radio Four said that many people were reporting that they were seeing hedgehogs acting strangely, moving about as if they were a bit woozy or drunk. A wildlife expert explained on air that this has been such an unusually warm year that hedgehogs raised second broods of babies. These youngsters were born too late to have put on the necessary fat for hibernation. Since they can't hibernate, they are out looking for food, but now that it's December, food is scarce and the weather has turned. These poor hungry hedgehogs are disoriented because they are suffering from hypothermia.

The advice? If you see a drunken hedgehog, bring it inside to get warm. Let it live in a box a box for a few days, and give it water and cat food. Once you have fattened it up, you can return it to the wild and it will hibernate normally.

I should guess that if you do this, you are all set for the afterlife. If you can't get into the regular heaven, the hedgehog angels will lobby for your admission to hedgehog heaven. There you will be entitled to eat as many worms as you like, for all eternity.

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On a rather more serious note, there was a thunderstorm in London today. At one point, I heard what sounded like an approaching train, which didn't alarm me too much since we live close to the tracks. However, this train was approaching from the street. I noticed, too, that the wind was blowing. It wasn't until one of my living-room windows shattered a few feet from where I was sitting that I realized that the train sound was the weather. The top five feet of one of our trees blew away. Roofing slates were flying away from houses across the street. And then it was over. I thought I had just experienced a microburst.

I started to clean up and assess the other damage: the broken windows of neighbors' houses, out fence blown down in two places. I heard sirens. A few minutes later, more sirens. My doorbell rang, and a carrier for Royal Mail who was delivering my package said, “Did you see the twister?” He certainly had. He had been making deliveries on Mount Pleasant Road when he saw the funnel of cloud come down, and he had first thought, “Now that's interesting!” and stood to watch it before the debris began to fly and he realized he could be in some danger.

Only then did I recall that tornado survivors have often compared the sound of a tornado to an oncoming train. Had I been in Illinois or Wisconsin, I'd have made the connection while the weather was happening. But in London? I just don't think of London as a place where the weather can be dangerous.

I went outside after the postal carrier left. More emergency vehicles were arriving here on Wrentham Avenue and on Crediton Road, where the damage was the worst. (Or so it appeared to me at the time. A house at Whitmore Gardens and Chamberlayne Road sent a whole wall of bricks cascading into the street.) I talked to neighbors. Some had holes in their roofs the size of a dinner plate, probably caused by someone else's roof slate coming in for a crash landing. One woman lost every window of her conservatory. (Americans would call it a sun room.) Fire and rescue crews were out in force, taping off areas. One of the firemen needed to find a bathroom, and I offered ours. This gave me a chance to ask him if anyone had been hurt. “Not that I have seen,” he said, “but if no one was hurt in some of those houses, it is thanks only to good fortune.” Someone else told me that one house had lost its entire addition, and others had collapsed roofs. The police helicopter circled for a long time, assessing the situation from the air.

Later, I heard that six people had been injured, and only one of them required hospitalization. He was discharged later in the day. But many houses suffered enough damage to make them unsuitable, and their occupants --- hundreds of them according to the newspapers --- are being housed in emergency shelters.

“Of course, you Americans are used to this,” said one neighbor. “We don't get tornadoes. Although I suppose with the change in climate, we'll be getting more of them.”

Maybe. Maybe not. Only a few places on earth have the right conditions to spawn such storms with regularity. Britain has had tornadoes before. Indeed, the country has an average of about thirty twister sightings a year. Globally, though, tornadoes are a very rare phenomenon and will probably always be rare here.

Nevertheless, between London's current drought, trees blooming in November because the weather is so mild, staggering hedgehogs, and twisters touching down on Crediton Road...

Well, all of these things could happen in the course of natural variation. In another ten or twenty years, I guess we'll know for sure. I hope the clincher doesn't turn out to be climate-induced famine. Hm. Even if I don't find a hedgehog to rescue, maybe global warming is another reason why I should learn to enjoy the taste of earthworms.