What we found on the playground

Sorry for posting twice in one day, but I have a story!

Latvian Friend requested that I join her for an evening bike ride, so we headed into the center of town to run around the castle in the dark.  Somehow we stumbled across a giant playground, and as as anyone who knows me can tell you, playgrounds have historically proven to be my kryptonite.  Not that they kill me or make me glow in the dark or whatever, just that I have to play on them.  It's like a compulsion, or at least something you're supposed to outgrow by the time you're 12.

Anyway, I started climbing a big wooden beam thing, when out of the corner of my eye I saw movement.  "Look!" I yelled to Latvian Friend.  "I don't know what it is, but it's alive!"  Whatever alive thing it was was little, fat, and ambling happily for the trees.  The next thing I knew, Latvian Friend was chasing after it.

But because I am not nearly as boss-like as Latvian friend, I would have stopped at the bushes. Certainly I would not have dived into shrubbery head-first after a questionable animal that may or may not have teeth and/or carry ebola.  And most definitely I would not, under any circumstances, have caught it.

"It" being the hedgehog.

"Oh my fucking Jesus," I said, as she triumphantly picked her way out of the coniferous jungle, "you caught a hedgehog.  And you're holding it.  With your hands."

"Don't worry, he's soft on his belly."

"Am I supposed to believe you've caught wild hedgehogs before?"

"Oh, sure!"

And that is how I got to play with a wild animal.

Moral of the story:  Ebola feels adorably prickly.