Naughty Pets Corner

Having had the hedgehog for over six months, we thought we have experienced all the varieties of naughtiness he was capable of, but (as we always find when we think an animal has been as naughty as it can) we were wrong. We were due to go down to Brighton for the weekend to see our scarily responsible doctor friends and as usual, the getting up and getting going stage of the day was taking a bit longer than expected. So while the Boy Wonder was in the shower I went down to clean out the hedgehog so he would smell as fragrant as possible on our return - I took out the heating pad, towel and bowl to wash and it was only once they were out that I realised that there was a suspiciously small array of places where he could still be. After a little frantic scrabbling through poo covered newspaper and some curious thoughts about how a hedgehog could accidentally shrink down to a size which could still be sheltering in the box, I was sure he was officially missing. I shouted up to the Boy Wonder who was a little confused as to why I was shrieking up the stairs and went back to being frantic around the kitchen, searching under the gas fire, down the side of the dishwasher and contemplating whether he could have got into the pan cupboard and down the gap between the kitchen and the cellar. I searched under the sofas and looked into every crack and crevice that could house a spiky little escapologist. I even considered the chance that he may have been stolen, imagining some vigilante looking through the window, misunderstanding the situation and 'liberating' him. Fortunately the Boy Wonder came down and, with his usual calm, collected approach to things, started rooting around under the furniture with the broom handle. A few seconds later he started laughing as his poking revealed that Hoggle was curled up inside an old slipper of his which has been under the dresser for at least a couple of years. Somehow he had managed to get out of his box (didn't know that was an option - he'd never done it before!) and make the heroic two meter journey to under the dresser where he clearly felt some synergy with the Boy Wonder's stinky slipper and decided to make it into a sleeping bag. I was worried that he was trapped due to the direction of his spines, but after I spent a careful five minutes cutting the back of the slipper open and peeling him out, he spent the following five minutes snuggling himself back in there like a big grey banana. This little routine meant that not only did we have the best excuse for being late ever ('Sorry we're going to be late - the hedgehog's escaped'), but also the fun of clearing everything off the dresser which was almost entirely offset by the cutest pictures even taken of a really dusty floor.