The Brits have a real soft spot for hedgehogs, and I get it. A hedgehog will work a garden over all night long, eating slugs, beetles and caterpillars, and never send you a bill. Ever had slugs strip a row of tomatoes overnight? Then you know why a person might want a spiky little vacuum cleaner patrolling the grounds. Over here in Missouri we've got possums doing roughly the same job, mostly on ticks, and nobody writes them any love letters. Different countries, different mascots, I suppose.

Anyway, a piece over on MSN says if you want hedgehogs visiting your garden this summer, you only need two things, and both of them are already sitting in your house: some meaty cat or dog food, and a shallow dish of water.

The food part's simple. Meat-based kibble or wet food, set out in the evening when the hedgehogs start moving. A lot of folks grew up hearing you should leave bread and milk out for them. Don't. That old advice will make a hedgehog good and sick. They're bug and meat eaters, so feed them like it.

The water matters more than people think. A dry summer dries up the puddles and low spots where these animals usually drink, and a shallow dish gives them a safe place to drink without falling in. A saucer or the bottom of a flower pot works fine. Small critters drown in deep buckets and troughs every summer, more than you'd figure. Change the water every day or two so it stays clean.

Want to go the extra mile? Cut a hole about the size of a CD in the bottom of your fence. Hedgehogs cover a lot of ground in a night hunting food, and a solid fence around every yard is a wall to them. One gap gives them a road in. I leave the back corner of my place grown up wild for the quail and the rabbits, and it's the same idea. Wildlife doesn't ask much of you, just a way in and a reason to stick around.

Tell you what got me to thinking about all this. I had a possum live under my shed for the better part of two summers when I first moved out here, and that ugly rascal kept the ticks down better than anything I ever sprayed. Any animal that handles pest control for room and board is all right in my book, whether it's got a face only a mother could love or a coat full of little spines.

Costs about nothing, works all night, and doesn't tear into the trash the way a raccoon will. I've paid contractors good money for worse work.