talbotlucas.org: a word to the wise is sufficient

This tidbit of celebrity news (courtesy of the SFGate) just tickled me on this rainy Monday afternoon:

STING AIDS HEDGEHOGS

Charity-loving pop star Sting has added hedgehogs to his list of good causes -- he's giving the threatened creatures refuge in his home.

The "Englishman in New York" singer has offered to take the spiky animals from Outer Hebridean, as they being threatened with slaughter in their native Scottish home.

Other big names who have offered land to the troubled animals include Sir Paul McCartney, lyricist Sir Tim Rice and author Richard Adams, all of whom were alerted to the hedgehogs' plight by Jethro Tull rocker Iain Anderson.

Kay Bullen of the British Hedgehog Preservation Society says, "We are very grateful and Sting could get some of the first batch."

She adds, "All sites have to be checked to make sure they are suitable hedgehog habitat."

I can't imagine that Sting wouldn't provide a suitable habitat for the little guys, but who knows?

In our household, "save the hedgehog!" is the cry when Wallace has disemboweled one of his stuffed hedgehogs and starts running off with the stuffing dangling from his mouth. (Stuffed cotton or furry hedgies are oddly attractive to corgis.) I don't think we'll volunteer for hedgehog saving, although it's amusing to think of how Wallace would respond to a real live hedgie.

For those of you who are perplexed by this interest in hedgehogs...there are a lot of hedgehog fanciers out there. More details than you could digest are available at Hedgehog Central (the link to the Comparative Mammalian Brain Collections was an unexpectedly interesting diversion that I found by clicking on "View a Hedgehog Brain"). If the site is correct, our "Groundhog Day" (2 February) was, in Roman times, "Hedgehog Day" and involved observing the quilled ones by the light of the moon (instead of early in the morning on a bitterly cold Pennsylvania morning).

More info than you wanted to know...