But there's another place to look for hedgehogs, and you never would guess! In people's kitchens. If you ever go to England you'll find them in many country homes, helping with the work. They're great on cockroaches, and they're perfectly safe from the cat and the dog. Both Puss and Towser know all about those spines, just as well as Mrs. Fox does.
When they've eaten all the cockroaches, give them some cooked vegetables, porridge, or bread and milk, and they'll be perfectly content. They're easy to tame and get very friendly.
In the wild state, besides the insects and things I mentioned, they eat snakes; and poison snakes, too! The poison never seems to bother them at all. Their table manners are interesting, also, when it comes to eating snakes. They always begin at the tail.[20] They'd no more think of eating a snake any other way than one would of picking up the wrong fork at a formal dinner.
UNDER THE HEDGEHOG'S WATER-PROOF ROOF
That's one of the things about good manners Mamma Hedgehog teaches the babies, I suppose. Of these she has from two to four, and she makes a curious nest especially for them; a nest with a roof on it that sheds rain like any other roof. Just as it is with puppies and kittens, the babies are born blind; and not only that, but they can't hear at first, either. While they are young their spines—I don't mean their back-bones, but their other spines—are soft, but they become hard as the babies grow and open their eyes and ears on the world. The muscles on their backs get very thick and strong, so that when they don't want to have anything to do with anybody—say a fox, or a dog, or a weasel—they just pull the proper muscle strings and tie themselves up into a kind of bag made of their own needle-cushion skins, with the needles all sticking out, point up!
III. A Visit to Some Farm Villages
TWELVE LITTLE MARMOTS ALL IN ONE BED
Next I'd like you to visit with me certain other farmers who remind us of the Middle Ages also; not because they wear armor, like the armadillos and the hedgehogs and the lords of castles, but because they live in farm villages as the farmer peasants used to do around the castles of the lords. Moreover, one reason they live together in this way is for protection—just as it was with the peasants—only among these little democrats there's no overlord business; each one's home is his castle. Another reason for this village arrangement is that it's such a sociable way to live; and they're great society people, these farm villagers. The marmots, for example, the largest and heaviest of the squirrel family, just love company. In their mountain country—they're mountain people, the marmots—they play together, work together, and during the long, cold night of Winter snuggle together in their burrows. Their burrows are close by each other among the rocks. They have both Summer and Winter residences. In Summer they go away up in the mountains, hollow out their burrows and raise their babies. When the snows of late Autumn send them down the mountainsides, twelve or fifteen of them, all working together, pitch in and make a tunnel in the soil among the rocks, enlarging it at the end into a big room. Next they put in a good pile of dry hay, carefully close the front door and lock it up with stones caulked with grass and moss. Then they all cuddle down together, as snug as you please, and stay there until Spring.
