AS the debate about hospital overcrowding rages on, spare a thought for Pauline Hindmarch.
Pauline, who runs a hedgehog casualty unit at her home, is having to deal with an unprecedented influx of the most prickly of patients.
The animal hospital, at Topcliffe, near Thirsk, North Yorkshire, usually expects to have only a few visitors to care for at Christmas.
But the recent had weather has caused a number of ailments, chiefly pneumonia, for the region's hedgehog population, leaving Pauline with the prospect of accommodating 13 of them.
She has seven recovering in her garage, four in a garden shed turned hospital ward and two in hibernation.
"We will have an unusually large number in over Christmas," said Pauline.
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