Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks. The situation with
relief regarding the COVID-19 lockdown has grown more vague, as no one knows
for real as to how it will occur: every country, (even the next-door neighbours
U.S.A. and Canada), is following its’ own schedule and so things are falling
apart further.
What things are that? The ‘global village’ dream/utopia of
the 2000s/2010s. Yes, things will not go back to the Cold War level either, but
whatever will emerge from the COVID-19 pandemic will be a very different world
from the Pax Americana that had been building since the Cold War ended. Do the Yankees
understand that? I have no idea, and the elections-2020 need to be surpassed
anyhow, Putin & RF paranoia or not. What next?
…The Asian giant hornet hysteria has died down – apparently,
professionals, scientists, etc. have figured out something similar to what we
have talked yesterday: that the Asian giant hornet threat may be exaggerated by
the COVID-19-related hysteria and paranoia, so let us talk about hedgehogs
instead.
Why hedgehogs? My family and I encountered one live back in
the old country, before we moved to Canada. It was a medium-sized feral park or
a mini-forest – the two concepts are not always as clear-cut in Russia as they
are in the West, (especially Europe) – and there we saw it. A good
old-fashioned hedgehog, rolled into a spiny, prickly ball not far from some
raspberry bushes.
Usually wild hedgehogs roll into spiny, prickly balls as a
last means of defense – their spines are shorter, vertical, less barbed than a
porcupine’s are, and so, some predators are able to get through them: the
eagle-owl’s talons are long, sharp, and hard enough to pierce through the
entire hedgehog, while a red fox is cunning enough to bypass the hedgehog’s
means of defence – but at that moment in time, there were no predators but us,
and the hedgehog wasn’t feeling defensive: it was just asleep. It was curled
into a ball and it was snoring. The hedgehog was in the open, it was broad
daylight, and so I am guessing that it was either inexperienced or just cocky…
or maybe there weren’t any predators in this particular forest, I don’t know;
what I do remember is that it took us a few moments to recognize the rolled-up
hedgehog for what it was, and then we picked it up.
…If you think that something went horribly wrong then and
there, you’d be incorrect: pound for pound, a hedgehog is much smaller and
lighter than most Old World porcupines are, as well as the North American
porcupine, and much less inclined to use its’ spines for active defence – it uses its’ teeth for that.
…Actually, make it ‘them’ – there are five genera of
hedgehogs, and between them, they number about 17 species, less than two dozen.
All of them are small to medium mammals that are active mainly at night; they
have poor vision, but keen sense of smell, and are anti-social. If porcupines
are rodents, then the hedgehogs are insectivores… only now, that mammal order
is defunct, and the hedgehogs, in particular, belong to the Eulipotyphla order,
which also contains their closest relatives – the shrews and the gymnures.
…Most people know what a shrew looks like – broadly. It
looks like a mouse, but with a shorter tail on one end, and a long,
proboscis-like snout on the other. A gymnure, on the other hand, looks like… a
shrew, but is a bit larger, about the size of a large rat… or the North
American, (Virginia) opossum: they are rather obscure mammals and so not much
is known about them.
What is known, however, that the mammals of the Eulipotyphla
order are a rather primitive bunch: aside from the hedgehogs, shrews, and
gymnures, there are several extinct families, as well as the obscure-known
venomous mammals called solenodons, and the moles and their relatives, (such as
the desmans). Aside from the hedgehogs, (and to a lesser extent – the moles,
but we will talk about the moles some other time), they all look like one another,
with the shrews being the most basic example.
…As for venom, the solenodons are venomous, and so are some
of the shrews at least: their saliva is toxic, maybe not to humans, (though I
am fully unsure about the bigger solenodons), but to their prey: all of the
mammals of the Eulipotyphla order are meat-eaters.
The hedgehogs, it should be noted, aren’t venomous at all,
but they, (or at least, the wild hedgehogs), got a big attitude and a mouthful
of sharp teeth to back it up, so if you want to have a pet hedgehog, you should
really get one from a special pet store or pet farm or similar – not go and
catch one in the wild, especially if you live in the New World, where there are
no wild hedgehog species, period.
As for ‘our’ hedgehog, after we caught it and looked at it
for a while, (people do not encounter hedgehogs very often, especially in the
wild), we just let it go, and away the little critter went, into the raspberry
bushes, and we never saw it, or any other hedgehog, again. (As an OT, like
their shrew cousins, hedgehogs do not live for very long – they grow up quickly
and die almost as quick. Sad, that is).
…Well, this is it for now. See you all soon.
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