United States or Niue ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
His pet's name was Jacob, suggested I think by the ladder which night and morning he used for ascending to or descending from his bedroom. Hedgehogs have a bad character as robbers of partridges' nests, and in our old parish accounts, under the name of "urchins," we find entries of payments for their destruction at the rate of 4d. apiece.
There remained to McClure the alternative of following Jean on his own responsibility, but the Stonykirker had far too great a respect for his skin to search a valley bristling like a thousand hedgehogs with all manner of thorn and gorse bushes, waved over with broom and darkened with undergrowth, any single clump of which might conceal half-a-dozen rifles, each with the eye of a sharpshooter behind it a mere spark in the sheltering dusk, but quite enough to frighten most men in his position.
"So here we've a-been now these many years, and the boy's been so happy as could be. Jackdaws, hedgehogs, squirrels, deer, naught comes amiss to mun: and he knows the moor and the woods so well as the deer themselves. He growed stronger too, though I wouldn't never take him with me when I went down to the villages to buy meal: but he would always keep out of sight and wait for me.
Hedgehogs, as determined by actual experiments, pay no heed at all to viper poison even when bitten on such tender places as the tongue and lips and eat the snake as if it were a radish. Even among animals which are not immune to the poison different species are very differently affected by the different kinds of snake poisons.
A wild-looking figure is descending the hill with terrible bounds; it is a lad of some fifteen years; he is bare-headed, and his red uncombed hair stands on end like hedgehogs' bristles; his frame is lithy, like that of an antelope, but he has prodigious breadth of chest; he wears a military undress, that of the regiment, even of a drummer, for it is wild Davy, whom a month before I had seen enlisted on Leith Links to serve King George with drum and drumstick as long as his services might be required, and who, ere a week had elapsed, had smitten with his fist Drum-Major Elzigood, who, incensed at his own inaptitude, had threatened him with the cane; he has been in confinement for weeks, this is the first day of his liberation, and he is now descending the hill with horrid bounds and shoutings; he is now about five yards distant, and the baker, who apprehends that something dangerous is at hand prepares himself for the encounter; but what avails the strength of a baker, even full grown? what avails the defence of a wicker shield? what avails the wheel-spoke, should there be an opportunity of using it, against the impetus of an avalanche or a cannon ball? for to either of these might that wild figure be compared, which, at the distance of five yards, sprang at once with head, hands, feet and body, all together, upon the champion of the New Town, tumbling him to the earth amain.
We won't terrify the Hedgehogs What can they do? but we'll collect all the Moles of the neighbourhood, and make a burrow all round the house; then if the Tinker's son comes, he'll fall in, and can't get any further. What do you think of that, eh?" "An excellent idea!" said the Mole-mother, recovering. "Send Karl round to-night, and begin the first thing to-morrow morning."
It is probable that in severe and continued frost many hedgehogs die. On January 19 , in the midst of the sharp weather, a hedgehog came to the door opening on the garden at night, and was taken in. Though carefully tended, the poor creature died next day: it was so weak it could scarcely roll itself into a ball.
All was fish that came to Tam's net: tadpoles, newts, and stickleback from the ponds, beetles from the dung-heaps, green crabs from the sea- shore nay, even in time such larger prizes as hedgehogs, moles, and nestfuls of birds. Nothing delighted him so much as to be out in the fields, hunting for and taming these his natural pets.
Budgen, in whose grey eyes the fighting light so fortunately never died, painfully doing out her rooms, and propping herself against the chest of drawers whereon clustered china cups and dogs as thick as toadstools on a bank. "I've told my Charlie," she said, "to keep clear of Hughs a bit. They comes out as prickly as hedgehogs. Pick a quarrel as soon as look at you, they will."
"You spotted snakes with double tongue, Thorny hedgehogs, be not seen; Newts and blind-worms do no wrong Come not near our Fairy Queen. Philomel, with melody, Sing in our sweet lullaby, Lulla, lulla, lullaby; lulla, lulla, lullaby; Never harm, nor spell, nor charm, Come our lovely lady nigh; So good night with lullaby."
Word Of The Day