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The carefully tended Isabella grapes wound their tender twigs up and around an apple tree; the roses were full of water shoots; the American lilies choked up with dead nettles. Wasps' nests were hanging from the branches of the trees, and giant ants had built their pyramids on the foot-path; and the hedgehogs boldly invaded the lawn as I passed.
He did not merely "reside" in it; he was part of it, and it was part of him. He fitted into it as one of its native denizens, like the hedgehogs and the thrushes. All that happened to it mattered to him. He learnt to look with reverence upon its main features, and would not willingly interfere with their disposition.
Such is the resistance and elasticity of these bristles, that the owners of them may be thrown to great distances and remain unhurt, and they will even throw themselves down steep places when they wish to move from a particular spot. Hedgehogs are nocturnal animals, and frequent woods, gardens, orchards, and thick hedge-rows.
Hedgehogs feed on insects, slugs, frogs, eggs, young birds in the nest, mice, fallen fruits, and the roots of vegetables, especially the plantain, boring into the ground to get at these substances. They will clear a house of black beetles in a few weeks, as I can attest from my own experience.
"Because you'd find some of the lanes muddy, and the edges of the roads full of brambles. You wouldn't care to see the bird's and squirrels and hedgehogs, nor the fish in the river, nor the rabbits and hares." "Why, those are all things that I am dying to see in their natural places. I wish you would not think I am such a macaroni.
The Porcupines and Hedgehogs, though usually classed elsewhere, on account of their teeth, their food, and a few other reasons not very natural, should certainly stand in this group of odd animals; and here let us place them.
"There's a Tinker's boy in the town," said the Innkeeper, darkly, "and he's always looking out for Hedgehogs I shouldn't be surprised if he heard where the family live." "Good-night!" said the Mole-mother, nervously, and hurried on with her children. "Some mischief will be done if we don't watch," she said to Emmie, who was a mole of unusual intelligence.
And they did not stop at any more cat or dog or bird shops, but passed them by, and at last they came to a shop that seemed as though it only sold creatures that did not much mind where they were such as goldfish and white mice, and sea-anemones and other aquarium beasts, and lizards and toads, and hedgehogs and tortoises, and tame rabbits and guinea-pigs.
Just as all the preparations were completed, there came a loud knock at the door; and the Schoolmaster himself appeared, his clothes torn, one flap off his hat, a bandage covering his right eye, leading in a little crowd of scholars that he had collected with infinite toil from many perilous positions. There were two Hedgehogs, a young Fox, five Badgers, a Mole, and a tame Guinea-pig.
So the good-natured Mole, having cut some slices of ham, set the hedgehogs to fry it, and returned to his own breakfast, while the Otter and the Rat, their heads together, eagerly talked river-shop, which is long shop and talk that is endless, running on like the babbling river itself.
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