And so, what we had only seen in an illustration from a Ladybird book
became the real living thing.
A hedgehog of our own
at once christened 'Arry...our 'Arry!
We oohed and ahhhed so loudly we
awoke him with a start.
And with that his fleas left him en masse
swarming like a Biblical plague
until he shrank to half his size.
I screamed. Me Ma screamed.
The dog barked nervously. The cat yawned "Like...yeah...so what?"
And so without much ado our 'Arry was returned
to the wild from whence he came
bundled into a Kellogg's Cornflakes box the cornflakes dumped upon the table top.
The horror movie of his fleas fleeing
still playing in my head over fifty years later.
Our 'Arry gone back into the dark.
***
Yet another poem pulled from my subconsciousness by the machinations of that Lisa Kelly of the Torriano Meeting House writing workshop who by the simple means of pulling a ******* with a hedgehog with a hat delivering a Christmas present plunged me into this memory of days gone by in the long ago of being a child. Half of our 'Arry's body weight being fleas abandoning the body of their host for the warmth of an Irish turf fire still haunts me.