"The whole ten inches of a hedgehog--he's about that long--are covered with short, stiff, sharp, gray spines. He's easy to catch--just ambles along, hardly lifting his short legs from the ground. And he goes about at night--just when we foxes are out marketing. That would be so handy, don't you see; but the trouble is about those nasty spines of his. Try to catch him and he rolls up into a ball with all his spines--they're sharp as needles--sticking out everywhere, and every which way. And--well, you simply can't get at him, that's all. So just don't have anything to do with him. It's only a waste of time." Hedgehogs live in hedges and thickets and in narrow gulches covered with bushes. They do their share of ploughing when nosing about with their pig-like snouts for slugs, snails, and insects, and when they dig places for their home nests. These homes they line with moss, grass, and leaves, and in them spend the long Winter, indifferent to the tempests and the cold. 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. [20] Isn't that the way a toad swallows an angleworm? Or how _does_ he do it? 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