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Roger Rabbits with |
“Erinaceus Europaeus. Hedgehogs.” Here we go. “What do you know about hedgehogs JB?”
I don’t know anything about hedgehogs. Nor do I particularly care about hedgehogs. For a couple of reasons.
If I show one tiny, spiky bit of interest in hedgehogs, H.R.H., that’s Her Royal Haughtiness who’s asking me the hedgehog question, the boss who wields the power and pays my beer tab, will have me scribbling 800 words on these ghastly, smelly, diseased, quilled things that really aren’t much good for anything.
It seems they’re just an exotic, invasive pest which beat up on our endangered ground-nesting birds. So no! It’s not politic to know anything about hedgehogs.
Except, EXCEPT – they have 5000 to 7000 quills. That’s a lot. And I suppose it raises prickly questions about the birthing process of hedgehogs. Questions I don’t have answers to.
I also know in England, where the little “hogs” are endemic, they were called “hedgepigs” or “urchins” – that’s where sea urchins got their name. Information that will keep you awake at night.
Snuffle and grunt
However, if Mrs Tiggy-Winkle shuffled under the hedge and set up shop in my backyard, I would be delighted. I would forage some slugs, snails, worms to make her snuffle and grunt with delight.
She, of course, is Beatrix Potter’s stout little hedgehog washerwoman of fiction, who lovingly does laundry and ironing for everyone in the neighborhood. Imagine? Where do we find one? Because 30 years ago I had a ‘Tiggy-Winkle’ moment. I remarked critically and unnecessarily about the “railway track” – two seams, ironed into the sleeve of a business shirt by someone trying to be nice and kind.
Bad call! Off went the iron, out the window went the goodwill. “Do it yourself then.” So, I ironed five business shirts a week for the next 30 years. The price of being a smart-ass.
Deadset slobbish
I know people who don’t iron shirts at all. Nor pillowcases. They specifically buy clothes that don’t require ironing. Dead-set common and lazy.
Mrs Tiggy-Winkle would be all prickly and snuffly to know 70% of NZers don’t even own an iron. They just wear, wash, shake, hang and wear again. Where’s the pride? Buy an iron and steam a nice tidy crease into your attitude and appearance.
Anyhow, I digress yet again. H.R.H. has seen a Facebook page promoting hedgehog wellbeing – Hedgehog Rescue New Zealand it’s called – rescuing sick, injured, orphaned, deprived, anxious and dysfunctional hedgehogs pining for England.
I thought we were in the business of ‘controlling’ hedgehogs, not conserving and offering them therapy and social services?
Hedgehogs vs cars
Hedgehogs are a pest, a menace with no known predator except for cross-ply tyres doing 100k/hr. It’s the only time I see hedgehogs – moulied on the motorway. Like possums, they don’t react smart in the headlights. Rolling in a ball and activating your quills in defence is actually no defence against 2 tonnes of hedgehog indifferent car. Splat! Another biosecurity threat resolved.
So where’s the Facebook page, the outpouring of love and concern for the important native species like the lesser tailed bat? The tuatara? And Hamilton’s frog?
Hedgehogs are only here because our forefathers wanted to bring a little of England with them. Same blokes introduced rabbits, stoats, weasels and rats to a ground level ecosystem dominated by flightless birds, reptiles and insects. The immigrant animals must have thought they’d been treated to a bottomless lunch.
101 Recipes for HHs
Pity it’s unwise to eat the wee hogs. “What zoonotic disease would Sir like with his hedgehog?” asks the waiter. “Salmonellosis, bacterial or fungal ringworm? Explosive diarrhea’s very popular in the USA right now.”
This is a just one idea from ‘101 Things to do with a Dead Hedgehog’ compiled by the nomadic communities of Europe. Encase hedgehog, quills and all, in firm mud and toss it in the fire. The mud bakes rock hard and when smashed open, comes away with all the quills leaving a roast meat called ‘hotchi-witchi’, tasting like rabbit or lean pork.
It’s suggested the fat, blood and meat had curative qualities – I would probably opt for a course of antibiotics.
Love thine hedgehog
If you resist eating your hedgehog, they can make excellent pets. Low maintenance, quite independent. Frisky and skittish – snuffling, 3 or 4km at night, alone. So when you wake up, your pet is arriving home exercised, buggered and needing a nap. They’re neither cuddly nor affectionate. So a lot of blokes would align with a hedgehog.
Then I read about some kind St Francis of Assisi type trying to get an orphaned hedgehog 200km from Queenstown to Hedgehog Rescue in Invercargill. So there’s love the length of this land for these unlovable things.