“Don’t hedgehogs sleep all winter?” asked little Inez, my eldest daughter, one day; “and isn’t this winter?”
“Yes, baby,” I replied, “this is winter. It is now well into December, and poets and natural historians have always given us to believe that hedgehogs do hibernate.”
“I’m not going to hibernate,” replied Hoggie, or he seemed to reply so, as he gave a kick with one leg and commenced a mad little trot round and round his yard. “The idea of going to sleep in fine weather would be quite preposterous, as long,” he added, swallowing a large garden worm and nearly choking over it, “as the worms hold out, you know.”
But great was our dismay when one morning we missed Hoggie from his yard. It was nearly Christmas now, and frost had set in, and once or twice snow had fallen.
Our gardens and paddock are quite surrounded with hedges, and trees of all kinds abound; so with the dogs we searched high and low for Hoggie, but all in vain. Eily found a rat, Bob found a dormouse, and rudely awaked it, but no dog found poor Hoggie.
“Poor Hoggie!” the children cried.
“Poor Hoggie!” said the youngest; “I hope poor Hoggie has gone to a better place, pa.”
“Has Hoggie gone to heaven, pa?” this same prattler asked me in the evening.
Now let me pause in my narration to say a word about hoggies in general. I have had many such pets; they get exceedingly tame and quite domesticated. They seem to prefer to live with mankind, and can be trusted out of doors quite as much as a cat can. They are sure to come back, and generally come in of an evening, trotting very quickly and in a very comical kind of fashion, and make straight for the kitchen hearthrug.
“It is so dark and cold and damp out of doors,” they appear to say, “and quite a treat to lie down before a cheerful fire like this.”