Just over a week ago ...

[dunxx]

... I received the following email from a friend in New York:

Just got my mail back. Address written letter for letter as below. Any ideas?He's a man of few words. This missive is only typically curt - not unusually curt. It's also typically cryptic. I couldn't work out what he was talking about. So I ignored it

Comments

[holographia]

well I for one understood his first message, haha! ;D

i think you'll be just fine once you have a gander at this:
http://syndicated.livejournal.com/cuteoverload/45242.html?mode=reply

[dunxx]

Maybe the thing that's wrong with me is my deteriorating grasp of the English language, then! I swear, that first email just looked like a jumbled mess of words to me - I thought he'd accidentally pasted one sentence into another.

What an incredibly keen (and clean) looking hedgehog. I read a sad article in the Guardian when I was back in the UK. Apparently the hedgehog population is dwindling. No-one knows how rapidly, or why it's happening:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/conservation/story/0,,1687999,00.html

[holographia]

having once had a hedgehog of my own i find this news to be rather distressing! the bit about them dying in yogurt cups ... :(!

all i can say is that i hope they're simply evolving to catch up with modern times. perhaps they're not being found squashed on roads anymore because they're brains are advancing and they've figured out to stop crossing busy roads.

i mean- right??! :(

[dunxx]

We can only hope so! The fact that fewer hedgehogs are being found dead on roads can definitely be read in a few different ways - and I sincerely hope it doesn't mean they're on the wane.

I have very fond memories of drinking beer in the garden of a local pub as night fell and the hedgehogs came out - those things can move when they want to! The garden (which was vast) was right next to the churchyard in a nearby village and the wall that separated the two was an old stone wall that zigged and zagged to create big grassy alcoves where picnic benches full of drinkers sat talking and laughing until closing time. Every now and then, a dark blot would detach itself from a clump of greenery and hurtle along the base of the wall at startling speed until it reached cover again (the blots were, of course, hedgehogs). It was nice to see them out and about.

So, how did you end up owning one of the little fellows?

[holographia]

my grandpa's hygenist had hedgehogs and one had babies. she talked my grandpa into taking one of the babies and he named her 'mrs. tiggywinkle'. original, i know!

after having her a year or two he decided he didn't want her any longer and offered her up to me. as i tend to like animals over people i readily accepted and re-christened her 'zoe'.

i had zoe for about three years. she was very grumpy and slept all day. my dad and i constructed a huge maze for her that took up half of the living room and she would just scuttle around that thing at lightning speed! eventually she'd get bored and curl up in a dead end and go to sleep.

after three years i passed her on to my sister as my new roommate had a cat who liked to jump into her cage. she lived with my sister another two years before passing on in her sleep.

she was an african pygmy and looked just like the one in the photo's i linked to.