A man faced the wrath of magistrates in Spalding, Lincolnshire last week after being spotted defecating on a dead hedgehog in the middle of the day.

Victor Ford explained his actions by insisting that "when you've got to go, you've got to go". He had been arrested by a passing policeman who spotted him with his trousers around his ankles squatting over a grass verge. On closer inspection, the copper discovered a deposit of "fresh human faeces on top of a dead hedgehog".

A hedgehog reacts to the news yesterday

 
In mitigation, Ford's solicitor explained that her client didn't have "any recollection of events on that day due to the amount he had been drinking."

Ford was fined £100, ordered to pay costs of £85 and, extraordinarily, forced to pay a £15 "victim surcharge". Which presumably will just about cover the costs of the hedgehog's funeral. The judge advised Ford, if again overcome by the call of nature, to "go out of sight." Next time, "the courts won’t treat it as an oddity – they will treat it as very serious."

Representatives of the hedgehog community chose not to comment.