Night visitors and job interviews

Last night I lay awake, unable to sleep.

It was not, though you might have thought it would be, because my wife had come home with possibly life changing news - the possibility of a new job for her in a new town and all the upheavals one might anticipate with moving teenagers. No, it wasn't that. It was because the cat hadn't jumped on the bed.

As happens normally about that time of night there came the noise of soft footfalls approaching the foot of the bed. Normally after that sound one of two things happens: Either the foot of the bed is viciously attacked to the sound of claws tearing fabric, or a soft purring thing arrives at my feet suddenly, before padding up the length of my body to deposit a couple of loose hairs under my nose and the back to curl up inconveniently between my knees.

This time, nothing jumped on the bed.

This time, the scratching at the foot of the bed was more tentative, accompanied by a soft, rhythmic, emphesemic panting. 

I leaned over the side to look, and by the light of the i-pod in my hand I saw a small round dark shape glide swifly away from the light and under the bed-base.  I leaned over more. Aiming the i-pod towards the middle of under-the-bed I peered at the dimly illuminated scene. I could make out the wallpaper on the other side in almost all directions, except for one small orb of darkness directly beneath where my wife lay.

I rolled myself back up. put the i-pod beside the bed and pulled the covers up to my chin.

"What were you doing?" asked my wife.
"Just looking."
"Is there a hedgehog under the bed?"
I didn't reply. She had enough to think about.
"Tell me there isn't a hedgehog under the bed," she said, a hardness coming into her tone.
"I didn't see one," I said carelessly.

This was almost true. And as I said she had enough to think about just now.
My wife works in the finance section of a large co-operative. Just one small corner of the place. She finds this boring and limiting.
One part  of her job she enjoys is taking care of the use of a particular piece of software specifically written for finance and banking. In the course of her week she speaks to one or other of the team of four who make up the company that wrote and maintain the software, and gets on with them all very well. And for the longest time she has been proclaiming: I want K***'s job at A****!
Well yesterday she was talking to J*** at A*** who happened to mentions that the guy who was supposed to take K***'s job when she left had never showed and the position was open again. I want that job! she declared, and he said Well you'd better get in quick, G***'s interviewing now.
So she e-mailed G*** and he e-mailed back asking if she could get to Christchurch for an interview.

We're driving up tomorrow.

Now she had every reason to suspect that there would be a hedgehog under the bed because the week before, when I was down at the ED waiting for somebody to get x-rayed because their sibling had slammed their wrist in the door, she sent me a fully disgruntled text message to the effect that she'd just made the bed, hedgehogs were disgusting, and how was she supposed to remove a large mother hedgehog and three baby hedgehogs from under it?
By the time we got home, she and the door-slamming sibling, with the aid of a shovel and a cardboard box had solved the problem. Not wanting to spook the mother into abandoning her babies by covering them with human scent, they had shovelled all four into the box and deposited them outside, and the mother had dutifully, over the next hour or so, picked the little ones up one by one and ferried them off to somewhere else. 

Anyway yesterday, while we were sitting in the conservatory discussing the possible ramifications of this interview. (Honestly would anyone expect you to travel nearly four hundred kilometres for an interview if they weren't just a little bit serious about employing you?) While we were discussing this a large hedgehog (they're just not scared of us any more) scurried doggedly across in front of us in the direction of the cat's bowl.
"Is that the mother?" I asked.
"Not big enough, I think," she said. "You know even if the rent up there is double what we pay here we could still..."
Well you get the idea. The next time I thought about the fact that a real hedgehog had walked within six inches of my feet (it no longer excites me, not since they spent a summer crapping on my pantry floor) there was no hedgehog in sight. When we got to a point in our conversation that we realised it was too cold to be outside, we got up and moved into the lounge, shutting the door tightly behind us.

Later, after the dark orb had glided under the bed, I lay thinking about how after about five years of little to no social interaction beyond work, I had finally found a small group of good friends with similar interests who I would sorely miss if we moved; about how the kids had just begun settling at school; about how after a miserable year workwise I have settled in a job which, while not stupendous, I quite like; about how Dunedin is... comfortable; and about how I should really get some sleep.

And that is when the grunting started.

TO BE CONTINUED

Terrifying Tim

For anyone who's interested the hedgehog problem seems to have been contained.  The cat-biscuits are now on the shelf in the pantry, and, at least while summer lasts (Ha! Summer...) both cats are being fed outside.

I just went out there to get something.  The tortoiseshell (Coco) was sitting looking quizzically at me through the glass of the door as if I ought to do something.  Then, when I stepped out, there was a clunk by my foot of her dish returning to position and a desperate scurrying noise as the small hog tried to force itself in the dark into another too small bolt-hole.

It's nice to know I'm that awe-inspiring.

Under siege

I have to remember to shut the kitchen door as soon as it gets dark now.  There's not just one anymore.  I swear I'll wake up one morning and find a whole crew of them lined up on the end of the bed looking at me.

What?

Hedgehogs. That's what.

As well as the enormous one I was telling you all about the other night, there's also a smaller one.  The smaller one is not very bright. It turned up in the middle of the day the other day - snuffling along - it ambled out of nowhere into the conservatory as I was sitting with my afternoon coffee.  Completely ignoring me it went straight into the kitchen and tried to force its way into a gap under the kitchen cupboards about the size of a matchbox.
Maybe it thinks it's an octopus? Did you know an octopus, regardless of its size can squeeze through any hole large enough to fit its beak (the only solid part of an octopus) through? <shivers> This is not true for hedgehogs. 

Anyway hedgehogs in the kitchen are disgusting.  (They're riddled with disease you know) And there was this one with its nose wedged under the pot cupboard door.  I wasn't sure how I would move it, and whether it had got any of its spines through and if they would act like the barb on an arrow or a fish-hook and the thing  would be stuck there forever.  I didn't want to touch it, so I got a couple of paper towels and laid them over it.
"I'll just put these over you, stupid thing," I said.  "I hear you're riddled with disease."
It tried to force it's way further into the matchbox sized hole. The spines came straight through the napkins of course, but it wasn't stuck and I gently picked it up and took it out and put it down with its nose in the cat dish full of biscuits.
"There," I said.  "If you're going to steal food you should at least start in the right place."
It sat there immobile until I went away and then immediately scurried away behind the nearest plant pot it could find.

The big one is smarter.  It can get in the cat door and knows exacty where the pantry is.

So last night I was sitting at the computer in my wee alcove in the dining room and heard a snuffling. I looked round.  There was the same small hedgehog, coming my way...

It's just not on you know?  Hedgehogs are outside thingies. What business have they snuffling their way around the food scarce regions of a people house?

I didn't bother with paper towels this time.  I put my open palm down beside it . When it started to curl up with my other hand I rolled it onto the first. This handful was all prickles except for the soft fur of its cheek against the tip of my index finger. Once I had it I took it down the hall, through the kitchen - dodging the small trail of slimy hedgehog turds - and back outside.  That done I shut the doors and checked the open pantry to see if it had been in there.  Nothing.  Just the open bag of cat biscuits and the flour bin on the floor.

I went back to the computer.

After about five minutes I heard crunching sounds through the wall. I thought I shut that door I thought to myself and went back out to the kitchen. 
I looked in the pantry again.

There, in the shadows between the flour bin and the biscuit bag, was an enormous round shape.  I opened the door wider.  In the light I saw my original nemesis, the one from last week, one shifty brown eye regarding me.  He had to go too.  It's a bit harder picking up a larger hedghog because they're a bit more bolshey, and while the spines don't actually pierce your skin, the extra weight pushes them that bit further into your palms.  Unlike the small beastie, the big one stank.  Holding him at arm's length I put him where I had put the other one, and shut the pantry door.

And then, dry retching, I cleaned up the turds which I had been planning to ignore.

Oh they're darling little things.

and I was going to add "at this very moment there's one..." but there isn't.  It's just the cat hunting a leftover bit of steak.

Bloody Vermin!!

They have ridiculously long legs if you ever get to see them, they're "absolutely adorable" if you listen to the Queen of Night, and "riddled with disease" if you listen to anybody's Mother.  This one... has left a collection of turds all over my pantry floor around the big bag of cat biscuits.

Don't get me wrong.. I thought it was absolutely adorable too a couple of years ago when it started.  Little did I know that that was the thin end of the wedge.

"In summer when the nights are long..." I like to recline on the tattered old couch in what passes for our conservatory, in partial darkness, reading by the light of the bathroom window.  One night, though I had heard scratchings and crunchings previously, I heard a noise and looked over the edge of my book to see a tiny hedgehog pushing its way in through one of the diamond shaped holes in the trellis.  Entranced by the nearness of one nature's little miracles I sat there quietly and watched as, once through, the little darling circumnavigated the conservatory.  Never straying far from the wall, it ambled the longest possible route to the cat's dish. It then pulled itself by the rim of the dish on to tippy toes and poked it's nose down towards the alluring smell of the biscuits.

crunch crunch crack crunch crackle crunch.

Every night in summer the dear little thing would visit.  I got into the habit of leaving small handfuls of cat biscuits on the floor nearer the trellis for it so that it wouldn't have to walk too far. And often as I got up in the night to go to the toilet I would smile to myself  as I heard it through the wall at its dinner

crunch crunch crack crunch crackle crunch.

I remember the last night it came through the trellis too.  I was out reading on the couch again and heard the familiar scrape of spines.  I looked over to see my hedgehog had grown some, and was struggling to force itself through its customary hole like Pooh after eating too much of Rabbit's honey.  Its head and its forelegs were through, and the more it pulled the more balloon shaped the leftover hedgehog mass on the other side became.  Eventually it had to give up, but it soon found another way in now that its legs were long enough for it to climb up the edge of the garden.

Crunch crunch crack crunch crackle crunch.

When a hedgehog eats cat-biscuits it does it much louder than a cat does. It sounds like little shards of pottery breaking in its jaws.  That sound ceased at the end of summer, but returned the next along with my now respectable sized, full-grown hedgehog. My wife began to complain about the little black turds around the floor of the conservatory especially around the cat dish, and sometimes in it.  I had long stopped leaving extra biscuits around for it.

Crunch crunch crack crunch crackle crunch.

Well, summer came again and once again we are enjoying our conservatory.  These days I don't so often sit out there late however.  I'm often inside at the computer of an evening.  With the weather warm however it's easy to leave that door open until the final lockup when I go to bed.

We have two cats.  One for inside and one for outside. 

The inside one is a dainty tortoiseshell female who we have had fixed because we don't like the idea of having kittens. She gets fed in the kitchen in a nice clean pair of bowls and sleeps on the end of our bed keeping our feet warm as her way of saying thanks. The outside one is a longhaired ginger tom who we never got fixed, I guess because we don't mind the idea of other people having kittens if they want them.  He is wild and free and often quite inexplicably soaking wet.  He gets fed in the conservatory, shares with the hedgehog and leaves hair on the old couch there as his way of saying thanks.

Anyway as I was saying I haven't been sitting out late, but I've been inside and leaving the door open till I go to bed.  I've been hearing noises from the kitchen through the wall.  It's not uncommon for the outside cat to come in and investigate the contents of the rubbish bin, especially when we've had chicken for dinner.  So when I heard a scrabbling noise I thought nothing of it.  Poor fellow needs some perks.  Then I heard a familiar noise...

crunch crunch crack crunch CLUNK crunch crackle crunch.

... and I had to see.

I walked out to the kitchen to see an ENORMOUS hedgehog, far too big for its boots sitting in the inside-cat's tiny dish.  When it saw me it shot me a guilty look and leapt out of the biscuit dish and into the water bowl.  Then it gave up and sat there, regarding me.
Now I had no wish, at that time of night to go picking up a large, wet hedgehog. I'm told they're "riddled with disease". So I shooked my head, wagged my finger and left the room, hoping it would see sense and leave of its own accord.   A few minutes later I heard more scrabblings and crept out to see again only to find this enormous ravenous beast nosing its way around the rubbish bin and obviously heading for the bag of biscuits in the open pantry, leaving filthy wet footprints as it went.
This was too much!  I showed it my foot, at which it began curling itself up into a basketball.   Oh no you don't, I thought, and with my foot spun it round on the slippery lino then gingerly presented my toes to its rear.  That was all the encouragement it needed. Showing me the full length of it's ridiculous legs the monster skittered out the kitchen door and back into the night.

But I can tell it's been in since. When I have to wash the dirt out of the cats water bowl. And when I regard the pantry floor. And sometimes in the night I still hear it...

crunch crunch crack crunch crackle crunch.