Saturday night and the hog with the bad leg is back

Early hours of Sunday morning: This is the same little hog that came to visit the previous Saturday night - the one I was worried about because I thought she was walking funny. (I say "she" because my feeling is this is a girl hog, but I could be wrong).

This picture illustrates why I was worried about this little hog. Here we see her trying to make a swift exit - but look at the way she's dragging that hind right leg. That can't be right.

I then did something I hadn't done before - I picked her up to have a look. Now, I don't like handling hogs - I don't want to scare them unduly - but I've been reading Hugh Warwick's "A Prickly Affair" and he talks about handling hogs as if it's no big deal. Besides, I wanted to see if I could help her. However, she curled up into a tight ball so I couldn't see her face or any of her limbs, so unfortunately I couldn't inspect her bad leg. Not that I'd know what to do about it anyway, unless it was something obvious like a Post Office rubber band wrapped around it.

I put her back on the ground and left her some mealworms. Here we see her tentatively having a look to see if the coast is clear. Poor little hog.

By the way, she came back again on Sunday night, so she couldn't have been too traumatised by my picking her up the previous night. I watched her very carefully this time and noted that she can move very fast indeed, despite the painful-looking dragging of the right hind leg. She obviously seems able to get around alright. All I can do is keep watching for her, I suppose.