Great Big Blog Party 33 - What the Heck?

As you know, I had planned to put up posts from Guest Bloggers in strict chronological order of their arrival in my inbox - so as to ensure total fairness and not promote any author or poster above any other - but just lately this intent has been sabotaged by some importuning from the prickly quarter.

Some people - ahem - some creatures are not best known for their patience, it seems, and I have been getting messages demanding to know where the Heck their post has gone. Officially, they should have a week to wait, but as I know in my experience hedgehogs - yes, this post is from the Hecks - the hedgehog family at the bottom of the garden! - can get a bit uppity when they are tired of waiting.

That, after all, is how I discovered that we had hedgehogs here in the first place. We had just moved into this house - July 7th 1989, so just about exactly 18 years ago - and we had no idea that, along with the house and the garden, we had acquired an extra 'lodger' or two in the small, prickly form of the hedgehogs who were used to being fed by the daughter of the family who had previously lived here.

So used to being fed that they were decidedly peeved when their extra rations were not provided by the new ownersand they marched out on to the lawn, snuffling and grunting loudly in protest, very nearly banging on the french doors with their snouts, demanding that their diet of slugs and snails should be supplemented by cat crunchies and left over cat meat.

And so we met The Hecks .(They were named that way by Anne McAllister when she finally got to see them after a couple of visits with the promise of but never a sighting of a Hog in the prickle)

Where the original family of Hecks - who knows just how many generations of Hogs have inhabited the twilight world of the far end of the garden - lived, we were never quite sure, but we ended up not daring to risk digging too far down in the compost heap for fear that the spade might slice into a sleeping Heck. But these days they do of course inhabit Hedgehog Towers, the lovely and snug little detached dwelling that we bought for them. We simply left this at the far end of the garden, surrounded by straw, woodshavings and leaves, and the Hecks moved in, taking the offered bedding with them, and built themselves the cosiest of nests, all wrapped up into a ball. As a result of that, this year we were delighted to see one of the Greater Hecks (no idea if it's Ma or Pa Heck) bringing the Littlest Hecks out onto the lawn for their share of the cat crunchies and the meat that the magpies had condescended to leave them

And now the Hecks have - with a little help from someone ( the initials A McA might fit here) have penned a post for the Blog Party and are impatiently demanding that they see it posted now! As I have experience of the amount of noise and fuss a frustrated Heck can make (believe me - if you'd ever tried to sleep through their snuffling, grunting, snorting and muttering courtship rituals, you'd not want it to happen too often) I am conceding to prickly demands -

and so dear readers - I give you The Hecks

We are unfamiliar with the concept of BLOG. We know about LOGs and DOGs and FOG and we know that MOGGIES are cats. But BLOGS are . . . strange.

Nevertheless.

Several cats who live beyond the glass door in the big building where the lights go on at night have told us that a BLOG is requested on account of The Cat Food Lady having written a lot of Books. We are not sure what Books are, either. A hedgehog's life is somewhat limited. We have an oral tradition, not a written one. Nevertheless.We are most grateful to The Cat Food Lady who brings us treats many nights. She does not mind that we have children that scuttle away without saying a proper thank you. She understands that they are shy. She knows that they will become accustomed to People in time as they are already accustomed to CATS. And she trusts that they will continue to enjoy her hospitality for generations to come.

We, the elder Hecks, wish to assure her that this is the case. We also wish to tell her readers ( the cats say that readers are listeners who listen to pages. We aren't sure about pages either or how you listen to them, but we are doing our best. Also we are not sure how this message is being communicated to you. We are telling it to a cat called Sir Sidney and he is relaying it to someone somewhere who is doing the writing thing -- like The Cat Food Lady does -- but which is all beyond us. There is a reason some of us are writers and some of us are hedgehogs. We expect you know that).

Nevertheless.

Sir Sidney says that The Cat Food Lady's blog (whatever that is) does not paragraph well (whatever that is) and so we should use Nevertheless to indicate that there is a new paragraph (whatever that is). We aren't sure what "nevertheless" is, either. Like we said . . .

Nevertheless.

We wish The Cat Food Lady (we know what Cat Food is) who is called Kate (Sir Sidney told us that) a very happy time celebrating (we know how to do that, too) her many books -- because obviously they are worth celebrating. So . . . felicitations, dear Cat Food Lady. Come and visit us at the Bottom Of The Garden whenever you wish. We will always be happy to entertain you. And we do hope you will continue to provide lots of Cat Food. It's scrumptious. Far better than whatever it is we are supposed to be eating.

With kind regards, deep esteem and all good wishes,

yours truly,

Great Heck

Middle Heck

Little Heck

Lesser Heck and

the Least Heck of all

GIVEAWAY:

Being Hedgehogs, the Hecks have no idea of a giveaway prize either - they did offer a couple of tasty worms and a nice fat slug but I thought that those would be difficult to package and perhaps not appreciated in the right spirit in which they were donated.

So I'm going to raid my book box again and offer the same prize as Sir Sidney gave away - namely one of my backlist titles together with an extra book from Anne McAllister (after all, anyone who can write as a Hedgehog must be worth reading!)

QUESTION:

It had better be a critter questions - so - excluding cats and d-o-g-s (yes Sid, even you!) What other animals - wild or tame - do you have in your home or see regularly in the garden? Extra point will be awarded for the most unusual ones.