One dark, starless night in October, 1883, I had been making a call upon
a neighbour of mine in the outskirts of our village. I had a tricycle
lamp with me, not so much to show me the way as to show me my dogs, a
valuable Newfoundland and a collie. Both are as black as Erebus, and
unless I have a light on a dark night, it is impossible to know whether
I have them near me or not.
Just by the gate, but on the footpath, as I came out, I found my canine
friends both standing over and intently watching something that lay
between them.
"It is a kind of a thorny rat," Eily the collie seemed to say, looking
up in my face ever so wisely; "I have kept it in the corner till you
should see it; but I wouldn't put my nose to it again for a whole bushel
of bones."
Eily's thorny rat was, as you may guess, a hedgehog, and a fine large
fellow he was.
Now I should be one of the last people in the world to advise my readers
to capture wild creatures and deprive them of their liberty, but I knew
well that if the boys of our village found this hedgehog, they would
beat it to death with sticks and stones; so for its safety's sake I went
back to my neighbour's house and borrowed a towel, and in this, much to
the dog's delight, I carried "Hoggie" home with me. The children were
not in bed; they were half afraid of it, but very much pleased with the
new pet, and set about making a bed for it with hay in an outhouse, and
placed cabbage and greens and milk-and-bread sop for it to eat.
When we all went to see Hoggie next morning, he had his head out and
took a good look at as with his bright beautiful beads of eyes. He
looked as sulky as a badger nevertheless. We offered him nice creamy
milk, but he would not touch it; we even put his nose in it.
"No," he appeared to tell us, "you can take a horse to the water, but
you can't make him drink."
So we placed a saucerful of bread and milk handy for him, and left the
little fellow to his own cogitations, and determined not to go near him
till next day. When we did so, we found, much to our joy, that all the
bread and milk had disappeared. He was certainly no dainty feeder, for
he had had his fore-feet in the saucer, which was black.
We soon discovered that night was the only time he would take food, and
that he very much preferred lying all day curled up in his bundle of
hay, sound asleep.
It has been said that rats will not come near a place where a hedgehog
is. This is all nonsense; we had plenty of conclusive evidence that the
rats which swarm about our place kept Hoggie company.
Under one particular tree the earthworms used to swarm, always coming
out of their holes at night, and around this tree it occurred to the
children to build Hoggie a garden. They fenced it round with wire-work,
and put a box and a bundle of hay in it at one corner. Hoggie was now
indeed as happy as a king, and he soon grew as tame as a rat, for
kindness will conquer almost any wild animal.
We did not interfere with his natural instincts, but in the evenings we
used to have him out for a little run, and very much he seemed to enjoy
it. He was afraid neither of dogs not cats, and would allow any of us
to smooth him just as much as we pleased, and pat his pretty little brow
between and above his pert, wee eyes. There was only room for one
finger there, so small was his head, but this was quite enough.
"Don't hedgehogs sleep all winter?" asked little Inez, my eldest
daughter, one day; "and isn't this winter?"
"Yes, baby," I replied, "this is winter. It is now well into December,
and poets and natural historians have always given us to believe that
hedgehogs do hibernate."
"_I'm_ not going to hibernate," replied Hoggie, or he _seemed_ to reply
so, as he gave a kick with one leg and commenced a mad little trot round
and round his yard. "The idea of going to sleep in fine weather would
be quite preposterous, as long," he added, swallowing a large garden
worm and nearly choking over it, "as the worms hold out, you know."
But great was our dismay when one morning we missed Hoggie from his
yard. It was nearly Christmas now, and frost had set in, and once or
twice snow had fallen.
Our gardens and paddock are quite surrounded with hedges, and trees of
all kinds abound; so with the dogs we searched high and low for Hoggie,
but all in vain. Eily found a rat, Bob found a dormouse, and rudely
awaked it, but no dog found poor Hoggie.
"Poor Hoggie!" the children cried.
"Poor Hoggie!" said the youngest; "I hope poor Hoggie has gone to a
better place, pa."
"Has Hoggie gone to heaven, pa?" this same prattler asked me in the
evening.
Now let me pause in my narration to say a word about hoggies in general.
I have had many such pets; they get exceedingly tame and quite
domesticated. They seem to prefer to live with mankind, and can be
trusted out of doors quite as much as a cat can. They are sure to come
back, and generally come in of an evening, trotting very quickly and in
a very comical kind of fashion, and make straight for the kitchen
hearthrug.
"It is so dark and cold and damp out of doors," they appear to say, "and
quite a treat to lie down before a cheerful fire like this."
Well, hedgehogs are the best-natured pets in the world, and so full of
confidence, and are not afraid of any other creature when once fairly
tame. You know, I daresay, that one hedgehog will keep the house clear
of black beetles. But nastier things than beetles come into country
kitchens and cellars sometimes--newts, for instance. Well, hoggie will
eat these; indeed, hoggie would eat a snake. I saw a hedgehog one
evening in the dusk crossing the road with a snake trailing behind her.
It was in summer, and I daresay that the snake was being taken home to
feed the young ones.
The young are born blind and white and naked, but the bristles soon
come, and by-and-by they begin to run about; then the mother hoggie
takes them all out for a run in the cool, dewy evenings of May or June.
The father hoggie looks very proud on these occasions, and runs on in
front for fear of danger, and to guide his little family to spots and
places where plenty of food is to be found.
In the domesticated state, a hedgehog will pick up its food in summer
out in the garden; but if kept indoors it must have food gathered for
it--worms, slugs, a little green food, and roots, chiefly those of the
plantain. Besides this, it should have bread and milk, and perhaps a
little cabbage and greens, which it may or may not eat.
I may tell my little readers that tame hedgehogs are very cleanly, and
of course they do not bite, nor do they put their bristles out when
being petted by those they love.
The hedgehog is the gardener's best friend, and any man or boy who
destroys one, is really guilty not only of cruelty, but of folly.
Now to complete my sketch of our Hoggie. I have a wigwam, although I am
not a wild Indian. My wigwam is a very beautiful house indeed, built of
wood and surrounded with creepers. It stands in the orchard, on the top
of a square green mound, with steps leading up to it.
Well, one day in spring, when the gardener was busy cutting the grass
around this wigwam, he told the children something that caused them to
come whooping up the path, all in a row, just like American savages.
"Oh, pa!" they shouted, emphatically, "Hoggie's come back. He is
underneath the floor of the wigwam!"