As local man Hector Kerching now explains, the looming scarcity of the little jaggy bastards is threatening the island’s economic development: "With a charity paying us to nab hedgehogs before SNH can inflict malky, we’re running out of hedgehogs to save."

While even now the Elysian fields of green paradises like Easterhouse and Pilton are being scoured to source replacement prickly customers to re-supply the island, analysts say that the long-term future for relieving gullible charities of their money may require SNH to first come up with another species to persecute. And Hector reckons he might’ve come up with a candidate: "What about midges? They’re millions of them, I’ll never have to work again."

Although popular opinion commonly regards midges as a bitey bastarding waste of space, the truth is more complex as Professor Beaker of Aberdeen’s School of Wee Bitey Bastard Studies now explains: "Midges are vital to the ecology of places like North Uist. They perform a vital function in giving tourists something else to complain about apart from the weather, the price of petrol and the fact that the locals don’t obligingly act like those endearingly mentally challenged yokels who weekly feature in Monarch of The Bloody Glen."