hedgehog picture by Gabriel
hedgehog picture by Gabriel
19th July 2003 Tongdean
"Everybody but me and Ross had gone, we were sitting outside at a small
table
Ross said 'Look!' and there was a hedgehog, we watched it walk away down
the pavement. Gabriel Jones
14th June 2003 Lewes
Full moon night. We walk to Lewes across the downs by the Jugg's road
at least once every summer. This year, we saw a well grown hedgehog in the
road just as we reached the Jugg's Road turn, by the Swan. It stopped dead
and I went up to it and stroked it, it's quite easy to stroke a hedgehog when
it
is uncurled, it feels like a fresh fircone, slippery rather than
prickly. We walked
on, then turned back and watched it scuttle to safety.
Gwyneth Jones
Picture by Gabriel Jones
Garry Kilworth 8.12.98
By the way, it's not
always necessary to bake a hedgehog in a fire. You can stick it in the middle
of a haystack where the combustion cooks it. The prickles come off when you
peel away the hard clay. But are we talking about hedgehogs to kill and cook,
or hedgehogs we love and cherish? Ahem.
A whole haystack? Well, certainly Garry. Or we could target the hog with a scud missile, that wd do the trick. The question of loving and cherishing vs eating is a debate we don't need to get into as long as we are only cooking hypothetical hedgehog… in other words, we'll cross that bridge when we come to it. Eds.
Lucy Sussex 8.12.98
As a child in New Zealand (the part I was living in was VERY English) I
was sitting by the bank of a stream and saw a drowned hedgehog swept
past, rolling over and over in the shallow water. I followed it past a
bridge and saw it had got stuck by its bristles on a spot where a branch
had snagged and created an islet. As I watched, it sneezed. Then I
knew it was alive.
So I waded in and rescued it. It hung around for a couple of days, ate
scrambled eggs, and then wandered off.
10.12.98 Forgot to mention my mother was told by a doctor that her case of tinea
was due to hedgehogs. She was walking barefoot in the early morning
due, you see.
Darko Suvin 11/12/98
TO A HEDGEHOG
(COUNTER-PROJECT TO CHU CHEN PO)
You nose about, circumspect & compact,
When smelling a threat, you stop & curl up.
Tho' small & warm, nobody will slap you around,
You are no mouse or shrew, your quills are sharp.
The quills grow out of you & into you,
They do not hurt, they have grown to be you.
[from the book THE LONG MARCH, Willowdale ON 1987]
E-mail dsuvin@po-box.mcgill.ca
Garry Kilworth 13. 12.98
I hope you're joking about the burning haystack. But in case you're not, I'll
take it you're not a 'country boy' like me. A natural heat builds up inside a
damp haystack (indeed even a dry one, but a wet one's better) which can reach
oven baking degrees. You don't burn anything, you simply stick it inside the
haystack and the natural heat cooks the hedgehog. This is why haystacks often
catch fire on their own accord. Here endeth the lesson.
Well, you learn something new every day. My editorial team here wants to know how d'you get the hedgehog to co-operate, eh? What if it just walks off once you've stuck it in the haystack? And why don't hedgehogs catch fire when they burrow into damp warm hedges s to hibernate?? But me, I think they're just being difficult. Ed.