by Max Lehmann

Created on: May 12, 2011   Last Updated: April 30, 2012

"Are you sure he's not just asleep?"

I blinked back tears as I shook my head, recalling the vivid and horrific picture of what I had just witnessed. There was no room for doubt, and the loss welled up inside me, making my small frame feel ready to burst. The hedgehog was definitely gone and the grief was astounding.

I was just ten years old and it was the height of summer. We'd spent the long school break riding bikes, exploring the lakes, marvelling over frogs and toads found in dank corners under trees but despite the nights growing long and the light fading only just before bedtime, the curfew had not been extended. Loving the freedom that the outdoors offered, we turned to spending time in the garden.

It was a modest garden in a typical English council estate, but we planted sweetpeas and nurtured the accidental foxgloves. We grumbled more at mowing the lawn once the novelty of access to a power tool wore off and the chore became apparent, but we broke fingernails and dirtied hands pulling weeds from the flower borders. The garden was no rival to the next door neighbour's, with its giant rockery and tiered flowerbeds awash with colour, but we tamed it and made it neat and for our efforts we were rewarded one night by the grunting snuffles of a hedgehog that chose to visit.

He burrowed his way under a fence, in a corner near a fencepost, and he lapped up the spare dog food we put down for him. He wasn't especially brave and he adopted the typical ball stance if we approached, but at a distance we got to watch him waddle around the garden poking his nose into plants and exploring the slightly lumpy lawn. He was a joy to behold, and we all grew to love his visits. My sister invited neighbourhood kids round to watch through the window and my brother proudly told the tale of our exotic visitor to his friends. We ignored my mum's dire warnings of flea infestations and even she was happy to supply the food we begged for to satisfy the spikey fiend's urges. We enjoyed his frequent visits and he tolerated us and it turned into a happy arrangement for us all.

Then, one day, after a trip to the library, I burst into the garden with the sun beating down and skipped up the steps to find space on the grass to lie and read, only to find our new friend was there, alone and quite dead. Eyes open, the hedgehog lay on his back, motionless, with his lips drawn back just a little over his tiny teeth. I was devastated and rushed back out into the street to tell my mum.

He was not our first loss. We had seen pets fulfil their short life cycle, and once our cat went out and never returned, but this was the first time I'd experienced the death of a happenstance companion. The hedgehog was not a pet, he was a free agent, and the loss was all the worse for it. I didn't know how strong my attachment had been until it was severed, and it was a sobering lesson for a ten year old girl. The summer was changed by the death, and I remember it as a turning point in the break from school. The holidays drew to a close, the autumn approached and the sun relented with its burning rays. The impromptu but loving burial of the hedgehog in a corner of the carefully tended garden signalled the end of summer and the start of the new school year.  The flowers shrivelled, the grass recovered from the scorching sun and the next year the garden was different but we never forgot. The year of the hedgehog in the garden saw the blossoming of the nurturing side of our childhood and now, even though the sting of the loss is gone, in a house a hundred miles away, twenty six years on, I still remember it fondly.

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