Milkshakes Brings All the Hedgehogs to the Yard?

Hedgehogs love milkshakes. Which leads them to dive headfirst in old McFlurry cups and get stuck, according to the British Hedgehog Preservation Society. For the last five years, the society has been lobbying McDonald's to change the design of the cup to prevent unnecessary hedgehog death. Thus, this McDonald's statement:

"We are delighted to announce that we have now introduced a new lid with a smaller aperture for our McFlurry dessert. The smaller aperture of the lid has been designed to prevent hedgehogs from entering the McFlurry container in the unfortunate incidence that a lid is littered and is then accessible to wildlife."

McFlurry consumers, it seems, will now have to removed the lid before eating. In addition to hedgehops, the special McFlurry spoon will no longer fit inside.

Upon hearing the announcement, millions of cows and chickens worldwide sighed and said, "Seriously? Hedgehogs?"

I've written about McDonald's other socially responsible activities here.

Comments

[Spiny Norman]

Dinsdale!

[Pi Guy]

Is it just me or is the real solution to the hedgehog problem to be sure that the McFlurry cups get in the trash can?

[Postmodern Sleaze]

Damn. When I read the headline, I thought this was a new ploy by the FSP to get attention through dairy products, sex appeal or both.

[Lost_In_Translation]

finally...someone thinks about the hedgehogs, because as you know, its all about the chil...hedgehogs

[Garth]

I'm with Pi Guy:

Mickey-Ds don't kill hedgehogs, litterers kill hedgehogs

Now what I really want to know is why aren't the soda companies jumping on the socially-conscious bandwagon and forcing us to buy their product either solely in the box or as singles since everyone knows that those nasty plastic rings kill ducks by the score!

[mjs]

Garth:

You still have six packs where you're at? I haven't seen a six pack in ages... All they sell now are 12 packs in boxes.

mjs

[Madog]

Man, the Brits really love their hedgehogs... When I lived there I remember our neighbors put our saucers of milk and bread for them to eat.

[db]

Hedgehogs are really cool. But I have to agree that the proper solution is to administer vigilante justice in the form of legendary ass-beatings to McFlurry-litterers. the UK govt should offer a bounty for proof of every ass so beaten.

[British Libertarian]

"Hedgehogs are really cool. But I have to agree that the proper solution is to administer vigilante justice in the form of legendary ass-beatings to McFlurry-litterers. the UK govt should offer a bounty for proof of every ass so beaten."

i would support that as a policy.

[Syd]

Why not make the hole bigger so the hedgehogs can have their snacks and escape?

[hamsters]

making the opening smaller is a terrible idea.

signed,

[Xboy]

The hedgehog's quills make it impossible for it to back out of the McFlurry cup, no matter how big the hole.

[Name withheld to protect the g]

Apparently hedgies don't eat as carefully as they mate?

[Chazz the Hedgehog]

I know one big thing: those McFlurries are tasty.

[Rich Ard's Monday night pedant]

McFlurry consumers, it seems, will now have to removed the lid before eating. In addition to hedgehops, the special McFlurry spoon will no longer fit inside.

[sigh]

[kevrob]

Maybe they don't have them in the UK, but I would have thought your with-it hedgehog would prefer to get his fast food from Sonic 🙂

Kevin

[Karen]

I fully support the beating of any litterers asses. Having said that, we have raccoons and possums here in Texas that will climb into or knock over trash cans that have any tasty bits in 'em. If something as stupid and ugly as a possum can do that, I imagine cute, intelligent hedgehogs can, too. Thus, simply not littering won't help this problem.

[Dave B]

"The hedgehog's quills make it impossible for it to back out of the McFlurry cup, no matter how big the hole."

So if people who litter don't put the top back on first, the hedgehogs are just as screwed?

[peachy]

Hey, don't forget that McDonald's put "significant research and testing" into the new tops, so no doubt they've dealt with all possible issues... and I believe that the Brits are so fond of hedgehogs because they munch on insects that would otherwise be munching on British gardens (and we all know how fond the Brits are of their gardens.) Although they are damnably cute, too...

[Rick Barton]

Well, I'd be simply mortified if I was throwing an affair and some of my guests stepped outside and saw fat Hedgehogs. I mean, what is one to think of someone who allows the wildlife that roam his/her grounds to become flabby under any circumstance, let alone owing to actually feeding them food that you wouldn't, at the club, even admit has crossed your lips?

[crimethink]

It's called natural selection, people. If we keep coddling these hedgehogs, they'll never advance to the next stage of their evolution (ie, reversible quills or at least an instinctive avoidance of McFlurries).

I mean, if someone had made sure that the cute little hominid ancestors, who had just come down from the trees into the expanding African savanna, didn't go hungry, where would we be today?

[HWW]

We don't have hedgehogs here in North America, but we do have groundhogs, and the woodchuck.

The woodchuck is found in open woods and ravines throughout most of Canada and the northeastern United States.

A terrestrial day-active animal, the woodchuck hibernates in snowy climes.

For more information, contact The Canadian Wildlife Service, Ottawa.

[Sandy]

It's the libertarian-Cute Overload connection. You read it here first.

And couldn't a bounty for litterbug assbeatings also solve the violence problems Scotland has been trying to solve by banning glasswear in bars?

[Sandy]

Or glassware...though seeing some of the guys clad in glass would probably start a fight, too.

[Rex Rhino]

We don't have hedgehogs here in North America, but we do have groundhogs, and the woodchuck.

And don't forget about the porcupine!! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porcupine

[ron]

this parallels the yoplait vs. skunks issue, which i only became aware of when i rescued a skunk wandering around bumping into things with a yoplait container on its head.

[Mark VIII]

This is pathetic.

I am personally going to hunt down and kill ten hedgehogs this year to make up for indignity of another company having to bow down to a bunch of long haired, sandel wearing, brown rice eating hippies.

Hedgehogs fucking suck.

[Garth]

We still have six-packs, though I suppose that they are going the way of the dodo........Hmm... Now I wonder what early settler downunder were discarding that the dodo got caught in???

[Warren]

Hey, when I grew up in the suburbs outside Chicago back in the 70's, my best friend's alcoholic father made a volleyball net out of six-pack rings. I'm totally on board with the 'screw the hedgehog, give me convenient packaged partially gelatinated non-dairy gum-based beverages'.

I must say though, the push tab is a great boon to mankind. Many of you are too young to remember a world literally littered with discarded pull-tabs, bane to bare feet and metal detectors everywhere. And I have to give it up to tamper-resistant aspirin bottles. At first I thought the whole Tylenol terror was an over-reaction to one nutjob. But in just a few short years, the packaging evolved to provide reasonable protection at a bayer minimum (hee, see what I did there) of cost.

[Keith]

Mickey-D's kills more people than they do hedgehogs I'm sure, via the bad health.

[D-FENS]

You know, they still actually have pull-tabs at the military bases in Iraq... I think the soda comes from Kuwait and Turkey, for the most part. It was quite a pang of nostalgia when I encountered them.

[Drew W]

I agree with the previous commenters that McDonald's should not have to alter their packaging because of poor meal-planning on the part of some local hedgehogs.

Here's an idea that might solve the problem: Simply inform local fundamentalist Muslim groups that the McDonald's McFlurry cups feature an abstract background graphic that sort of looks like Arabic script for "The Prophet Muhammad (Peace Be Unto Him) Regularly Watches The 4:00 AM Rerun Of "Becker" -- and likes it!" Then, believers outraged at this blasphemous allegation will search high and low, beating the bushes to seek out and dispose of the offending cups. That way, things work out great for everybody.

Except for the hedgehogs, who get beheaded.

[Warren]

Hey D-FENS,
Did you wedge the your tab in the narrow end of the hole?

I remember dropping them into the can was common for a while, until a couple of people swallowed em and cut up their throats. Then wedging became the custom until the push tab showed up.