ERINACEOUS BEHAVIOR: By KJ Hannah Greenberg
Thursday, August 26th, 2010Fei-Fei took a bite out of the small mammal that was using her hand as a toilet. Immediately, her mouth filled with quills and viscera. It hurts to chomp on hedgehogs.
Kicking its hind legs reflexively, the smaller critter shuttered and then silenced. It had expected food, not death. For long seasons the giant had provided that spiny beast and a large number of its cohorts with safety, with housing and with nourishment. She had handcrafted their hibernaculum and had personally picked out all of the berries and larva which she fed to them.
Fei-Fei threw the carcass alongside a wall. More guts oozed out. The lifeless body dropped onto the carpet, staining the area beneath it with brown, with red and with bits of whitish yellow. A strange purple organ protruded from a gash in its abdomen. For reasons beyond her ken, the hedgies had become uncomfortably feisty.
She booted the pile of skin and sharps. A shrill sound of indignation answered her movement. Her livingroom rapidly filled with an army of small insectivores. They charged.
Each brave soldier leapt at the woman, taking away a mouthful of flesh before falling earthward. Fei-Fei, too, tumbled over.
Numerous others of those small monsters jumped to gobble her. Their indignation was easily telegraphed, amplified and resolved. Larger species ought never to murder their members.
In minutes, only bones were left of the most recent offender. Their array’s safety secure, a few hedgies, all with stomachs distended well beyond ordinary limits, gnawed at the junctures of some of the remaining calcified connective tissues. There would be no need for the collective to engage in the hunt for at least several days.
Meanwhile, a pup trotted up to tug at his dame’s teats. She pushed him aside with a paw and buried her snout, for a second time, in the grey matter her companions had discarded. Hedgehogs are not fussy eaters, being content with either animal or vegetable food stuffs and only leave over food if they are completely sated.
Disgruntled, the little hedgehog shimmied up to a window in time to view an alternative option for his dinner. On the sidewalk below, a man was walking a dachshund. The wiener hound squatted, dug in a back-pedaling manner and then squatted again. The man, meanwhile, was engaging some mysterious other on his cell phone. Neither leviathan noticed the small, prickly being eyeing them while salivating copiously.
A few days later, that pair, too, was reduced to bone and hair and the wee pup, once more, had to scout for lunch. It took months for those animals to desiccate an entire city block.
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©2010 KJ Hannah Greenberg
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