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.