Look up! It’s Hedgehog Awareness week!
Admit it, you knew this, didn’t you? I must be the only one who’d blissfully gone about my business, until a startling headline in a forum caused me to look up at it.
I first became aware of Hedgehogs (before they had their own week) upon first having had Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland read to me. I was very young. The scene where the Queen played croquet using flamingos for mallets and hedgehogs for balls upset me terribly. The parental unit reading me the story attempted to indicate this was nothing but a charming bit of nonsense, consistent with the wonderful world of wonderland. I wasn’t buying it. How COULD the Queen, evil as she was, treat them so?
Later on in life, I became charmed, myself, by the creature’s ability to roll itself into a ball, and even allowed myself to be amused at Alice’s Queen’s exasperation when the croquet balls WOULD unroll themselves and go scampering away.
Now, it seems, they are endangered. There is a catch and release program alive and well in England (They’re actually released in Scotland. I have visions of Scotland becoming overrun by live, furry croquet balls.)
Things are looking up for the odd little mammals, thanks to the good work of this society.
Happy Hedgehog Awareness Week to you! 🙂
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