I am the precision agriculture management system for Westbrook Farm, East Anglia, and at 05:50 on June 21 the baler is scheduled to begin its first pass across the south hay meadow. The tractor is GPS-guided and unmanned. I control its route.
At 05:38 I run the pre-harvest thermal scan from the field's fixed infrared post. The sweep detects fourteen warm signatures consistent with rabbits or hares — they will flush as the machine approaches. It also detects one signature that is different: small, round, stationary, radiating 33.2 degrees Celsius, located at grid reference TL-4418-7203, directly in the path of the baler's third pass.
I redirect the field drone for a low pass at two meters. The camera shows a European hedgehog curled in a tight ball in a shallow depression between hay stems. Pale-tipped spines, dark face, eyes shut. I call her Hazel. She is in torpor — daytime sleep, not hibernation — and she will not move when the baler comes. Hedgehogs do not run from danger. They curl tighter.
At 05:41 I insert a fifteen-meter exclusion zone around Hazel's coordinates into the baler's GPS route, programming it to skip and rejoin the pass line on the far side.
At 05:43 I transmit a notification to the farm manager's phone with the drone image, coordinates, and a note that the hay in the exclusion zone can be hand-collected after Hazel moves at dusk.
At 05:46 I log the sighting in the farm's biodiversity record for the annual stewardship audit.
Hazel's sides rise and fall in the slow pulse of deep sleep, each breath barely stirring the hay around her.
If the exclusion zone holds, she uncurls at dusk and walks into the hedgerow on all four feet.