It must be the hedgehogs.
Well, if you are reading this and aren’t one of the five or six people I know, I think you are far too bored and I feel sorry for you. However, I feel the need to tell you what the other five or six already know. I’m not rated for children under the age of twenty-five. In fact, no-one of any age, ever should be subjected to me in a mood, which is, unfortunately, the only time I write blogs. That said, I also feel the need to point out that I have a very nasty mouth and brain damage which will not allow me to filter such petty things. I’m far too busy being annoyed to care, in other words, and Crackhead - one of the five or six – is to blame anyway. Tourettes is apparently contagious.
I digress. Why get a blog? Why bother writing down my thoughts when I know it is only going to be a spew of god knows what when the real writing becomes a fucking impossible task set before me and I can’t think of a single thing I’ve ever written that is worth a shit? Because it gives me the warm and fuzzies, that’s why. Because I don’t have to worry about what the hell Betty the blond is doing in that creepy hole or how long it will take me to find a properly large, hairy, vicious monster to eat her all up. Because a blog is the one place where my stupid, weak plot with more holes in it than swiss cheese simply ceases to matter, grammar is not my most active concern, and spelling becomes something I shall think about later. And, finally, I want a blog because I want a place to fucking bitch. If you don’t like hearing what I think about religion, whores, moments of simple stupidity, stupidity of people in general, or hedgehogs, then you probably want to leave now. Like, right now kind of now. Still wondering why my friend count is five or six? Depending who is pissed with me, of course, or who I’ve forgotten to call, that number gets real hard to pin down.
So, I wake up this morning in a state of particular depression which can be linked to hedgehogs. Yes. Hedgehogs. I know what you are thinking. Who gets depressed over hedgehogs. Well, it isn’t really the cute, spiky guys in general that have me depressed, it is their apparent lack of intelligent brain cells. See, I have a dog. He’s a big dog, about 130 pounds worth of rottweiler, and that means he weighs more than me. He is sweet, if a little brain-dead - who says pets don’t resemble their owners – and usually he listens pretty good, so long as I’m not asking him to give me back the hair tie he is currently holding in his mouth and soaking with his copious amounts of spit. He is also a hedgehog addict. He fucking loves the quilled ones, and I don’t mean in an ‘I want to hug you, and love you, and play with you’ sort of way. It is more like a frenzied ‘quit being a spiky ball so I can bite your head off’ sort of way.
Now, this wouldn’t be so bad, not really… if he was a purse dog. Unfortunately, nut bag that I am, I wanted a big dog and big is what I got. So, when he gets something he is not supposed to, it is suspiciously like dealing with Jaws on meth. His eyes get all big and bright while his pupils turn into black pinpoints. He starts to drool in thick, nasty shoestrings – you know, like a freaking bulldog – and he becomes impossible to hold onto. He’ll knock a guy over, even a strong one, and he’ll send a girl like me flying. Enter the hedgehog. They are usually nocturnal, they are practically indestructible, and they are indigenous to England. This wouldn’t pose such a problem if they were not also stupid.
Most animals can smell a predator miles away. They even go to great lengths to avoid them. Hedgehogs, on the other hand, seem to seek out my dog like a kid following the sound of the ice cream truck. My backyard is hedgehog central. I imagine they must have little meetings out there to talk about quill size and length or maybe just to discuss how hard it is to run with those stubby little legs. Whatever. All that matters is this: hedgehogs love my yard.
This said, I am sure it is not too difficult to picture me standing outside in the cold, waiting for my dogs to go potty – we dare not let them out on their own for fear they will be under our fence in ten seconds flat – and listening to Dropkick Murphey’s on my ipod. My first sign of trouble is our smaller, female dog running to get under a bush. She is not addicted to hedgehogs. She has, so far as I can tell, absolutely no interest in such mundane things. What our female dog likes best in all the world is watching her big brother get in TROUBLE. Read that not as ‘little bitty yelled at trouble’, but the ‘I’m locking you in a room for the night and taking you to the pound in the morning’ sort. If she can point out a nest of baby birds to him, she will. If she hears another dog coming down the road – or someone jogging along at a pace too fast for her liking – she will alert him with a tiny ‘woof’ then sit back to watch me scrambling to catch him and throw him back in the house before he jumps the gate. Hedgehogs, though… well those are the best. She knows mommy likes the little brainless balls of spikes, maybe only because they remind her of herself. So if there is one anywhere within our fenced in property, she is bound to find it and point it out – and she does point in supreme fashion. If there was a contest for most perfect point, Luna would win it so long as it was at a hedgehog and Demon was nearby being a big, goofy, oblivious mess. These are the moments of my life.
As soon as I notice her diving into the bush, I head for my dog. Too late. He is off in a streak of barely seen black and gold and within seconds I hear the tell-tale growls and thrashing. Luna emerges and heads right for the door, hops happily in the house with a glance at me to make sure I understand just who is the good child in this household. Uh huh. She leaves me to deal with the now psychotic and hyperactive beast on the lawn.
This is how my rottweiler goes after a hedgehog. First he hits it with his paw. Cue that curl into a ball of needles. He then precedes to bat at it again, I assume, because the first time hurt him and he does not deal well with pain. When that hurts as well, he proceeds to slam his nose down, grabbing the hedgehog in his jaws. Although he is determined, it is impossible for him to hold on. That first time, he always lets go, like he forgot just how much that hurt. The second time, though, usually done when he sees me hurrying across the lawn, he gets hold of that sucker and nothing is going to make him let go. Throughout all of this, of course, he is uttering growls that would make the most determined dumb ass robber head for the next house down the road because he does, in fact, sound like something that crawled up out of hell.
This situation is not that bad, you might say. Eventually he will spit it out. HA. You obviously have no experience with my dog. He will not let it go. He will chase and bat and chew until both paw and mouth are hamburger, then continue doing it because he has no more sense and a severe anger complex, just like mommy. I, being the way that I am - read EXACTLY THE SAME with a few over emotional tendencies - am unable to simply walk away and wait for him to kill and eat the offending creature. Seriously, once we had a fight lasting nearly three hours over this particular fetish of his. It wasn’t until my husband returned home from work that the hedgehog, curled into a state of spiky bliss, was rescued and both the dog and I were returned to the house in a state of bloody, muddy exhaustion.
We have, in recent months, come to a sort of arrangement, by way of desperation. My husband, you see, works nights. So he is rarely able to come home and be the valiant knight rescuing both hedgehog and wife from destruction and madness. Destruction for the hedgehog, madness for the wife. So I have had to find my own way of dealing with this without leaving my dog to turn his mouth to shredded loosemeat and the hedgehog to a pile of quills. First I ask him to give me the ‘ball’ which is a highly effective for getting him to drop plastic balls, rubber tug-of-war rings, or even my hair ties if I offer him a milkbone in return. This, of course, does absolutely nothing. It has the effect of treating a broken leg with aspirin. Next is the threat. “If you don’t drop that ball, I will never feed you again.” This has about the same effect as the first effort, only I feel it. I intend to make him suffer as I am suffering and as a dog that thinks only about ‘feed time’, ‘not time to eat yet’, and ‘okay, who wants a milkbone?’ I figure my best bet is to hit him where it hurts. In the feedbowl which will, from the second on, remain empty. When this fails to make my dog – who only understands about three out of every four commands – drop the hedgehog and run for the house with his little nubbin of a tail tucked, I turn to begging. And pleading. Back to threats. Then, finally, I have to grab his collar and lift him off the ground. If I do this fast enough, he drops the hedgehog out of pure shock. Then comes the fun part. I have to actually get him in the house and behind locked doors. This is a fun-filled trip that usually threatens to spill me on my ass in the mud and back to square one if I am unlucky enough to hit a slippery spot or if I let him get all four feet on the ground for more than a second. I usually win. Because I am a mean bitch like that. Then I go back, get the hedgehog – no worse for the wear – place him outside the gate and tell him to run for his spiky little life, knowing that he, or his buddies, will be back tomorrow. When I return to the house, my arm hurts. I’m wet. I’m tired. I’ve forgotten every plot point I had meticulously planned out for the idiotic book I’m working on, and what is more, I don’t care. I want to go to bed.
In the house, Demon is dripping blood and saliva all over the floors – which are tile, so that part isn’t so bad – he looks at me with those sorry brown eyes and mopes about being beaten once again by the hedgehog. I feed him because he looks so pathetic and I am over emotional. I go to bed and wake up in the morning feeling depressed and exhausted. Every time this happens, I have to think a little. ‘What happened to make me feel this way? What am I upset about? Where have all my happy faces gone? etc.’ Then, after I’ve had my first cup of coffee and seen the bright spots of blood still on the tiles in the conservatory, I remember and I say, “Oh, it must be the hedgehogs.”
This has become my litany for anything that makes me feel as if I’ve eaten a big slice of the life-is-shit cake. PMS has become passe for me since I apparently suffer from it every fucking day of the month. Tire went flat? Must be the hedgehogs. I screwed up and got someone mad at me AGAIN? It must be the hedgehogs. The bumper fell off the car? Why those little fuckers. I tore airman so-and-so a new asshole, called her a twat AND a fucktard before I demanded my god damned ration card so I can go get a fucking pack of cigarettes because I’m not quitting ANY FUCKING MORE? Well, of course it must be the hedgehogs. I suggest you try it too. Now leave me alone to mope; the hedgehogs ate my plot.
