Inktober/Blogtober Crossover: Day 25

Today's Inktober prompt word is "prickly" and it immediately reminded me of a story from earlier this year, which I thought I might share with you.

Some readers may know that my family has a dog called Rusty.  He's a black labradoodle and he's an absolute sweetie.  

Every night before bed, Rusty goes out for his final trip into the garden, to do any last minute business.  I like to imagine he has very important meetings with next door's dogs during these trips, possibly discussing the price of dog food, or the quality of that day's walks.

Anyway, for a period earlier this year, Rusty started behaving slightly strangely.  He'd go outside, bark a couple of times (that bit isn't strange, he always barks once or twice when he goes out last thing at night; I like to think he's reminding the neighbourhood that he'll be patrolling the kitchen whilst we're all asleep) and then he'd head to a certain spot in the garden and just... Stare at it.  Often, Mum, Dad or I would call him into the house and he'd just stand there, glued to the spot.

Obviously, last thing at night, the garden's pretty dark and even with the back wall light on, we couldn't work out what it was that was keeping him out there.

After a few days of this, we decided to investigate.  One evening, we let Rusty out for his last trip wee before bed, waited for him to stop and stare at the same random patch of garden and I followed him out to finally see what it was that was flummoxing him so much.

It took a while to spot it.  Like I said, the garden gets pretty dark late at night and the area he was starting at had some foliage around it.  But then, I spied something in the grass.  

It was, you've probably guessed by now, a hedgehog.  A rather large hedgehog.

Rusty, despite his obvious fascination, was showing no signs of wanting to get the hedgehog, but he was clearly very unwilling to take his eyes off it.  Where it had come from and why it was coming into the garden every night, we weren't entirely sure, but it and the dog were just sat there, engaged in one long staring match.

I asked my friend Chloe from work whether there was something we should be doing.  Chloe now volunteers for a hedgehog rescue charity, so I consider her to be something of an expert.  She told me that the hedgehog was probably hungry and thirsty and we should consider leaving it a bowl of water and perhaps some of Rusty's biscuits, crushed up.  

However, just as we had the information on what to do, so our nightly visits from Mrs Tiggywinkle, as Mum named her (after the Beatrix Potter character) came to an end.  The last time Mum saw our prickly friend was that evening, at the opposite end of the garden, heading towards the tiny gap in the fence that leads into our neighbour's back garden, instead.

I'd like to think the hedgehog found an abundance of food and drink there and that's why it hasn't returned.  But you can rest assured that in the future, if Rusty takes a strange interest in one, dark area of the garden at night, I'll know what to do and I'm be excited to see if we have any more prickly visitors!