Orace was a Nedgeog. I know what you're thinking already, you're thinking that I can't say my aitches aren't you? Well I can. But you see, Orace's name really is Orace and not Horace, and he's a bona fide Nedgeog and very definitely not a HedgeHog.
The confusion over what was what all started back in feudal times, at least, people get confused, but Nedgeogs don't. They know very well who and what they are.
You see, once upon a time ALL the animals of his kind were called Nedgeogs. It's an ancient term meaning spiny wanderer, and that is what they were and that is what they did. They were spiny and they wandered about.
It wasn't until feudal times, as I was saying, that things changed.
The poorer peasants, with their small plots of land could grow very little in the way of food to live on that was the least bit fancy or posh. Not only that, but the slugs and snails and great numbers of insects liked posh food too and so it was always a great struggle to finish a season with a bit of something nice to put in the cooking pot.
So over the years, while the peasants knew that Nedgeogs did quite nicely in the cooking pot themselves - they also noticed that whenever a Nedgeog was about, snuffling away in the fields, that there was far less damage to their crops. And so it came to be an unwritten rule that Nedgeogs should be left to go their own way, since they were good for everybody, and it was not unknown for a peasant to salute a passing Nedgeog with a cheery greeting.
But of course nothing ever stays the same, and certain unscrupulous people used to deliberately leave a few titbits out to encourage the Nedgeogs to visit their own plots in preference to others.
Before long, everyone was doing it, and before much longer, all you would see the length and breadth of the land were hosts of fat and lazy Nedgeogs. Crops once again began to suffer, and though the feudal Barons banned the feeding of Nedgeogs with quite fierce penalties nothing changed. Nobody was going to give up before his neighbours did.
In the end it was a yeoman farmer in the western provinces who came up with a solution. He collected all his Nedgeogs up and put them in a cage. He didn't feed them any titbits, but what he did do was to let them out everynight on a collar and a long lead.
Pretty soon the hunt was on and peasants scoured the countryside for miles around seeking out their own Nedgeogs. Within a year there were no free Nedgeogs to be found anywhere in the country except for one single family, that no one knew of, who were living very quietly in a thicket in an area we now call Wiltshire.
Needless to say, everything went quite well for a time, and the peasants, who had little land to spare, often built the cages in the hedgerows to avoid using up good planting land. Given the Nedgeogs noted appetite for his favourite foods it wasn't long at all before they were popularly known all over the place as Hedge Hogs, which, in the course of time got shortened to the one word we know them by today.
But there was a change taking place. The Hedgehogs were beginning to suffer from being caged and tethered. They began losing their appetites, and, strangely, they began to lose some colour too. Instead of the deep rich colour they had always been, their spines began to grow pale at the roots. In fact, within a few years their spines became almost white. The peasants persevered for a few more years, but it was obvious to all that the great experiment had failed. Less and less the Hedgehogs ate, and paler and paler they grew.
In the end it was decided that the only thing to do was to let them all go. And so they did. Within a single season the Hedgehogs regained their famous appetites and things were back to the status quo. Well, more or less. Because you see, they never did grow their spines quite back to the same colour they always were before. The roots of their spines stayed just slightly paler than the tips.
So what of Orace?
Orace, is a direct descendant of that one uncaptured family from Wiltshire. His spines, like theirs, are rich in colour from root to tip, and many are the tales he can tell of those far off days. Tales that have been handed down from father to son about the perils endured by his ancestors when the great hunt was at it's peak. It was, in fact, this family which first adopted the technique of curling up in a ball and rolling around in dead leaves so that the leaves would stick to their spines and hide them from view. They had several other tricks too, this much we know, but Orace never talks of those because if we knew how he hid, then we'd have a pretty good idea of how to find him, and Orace is not too keen on the idea at all.
In fact I'll bet you that you've never seen a Nedgeog.
All you've ever seen before are Hedgehogs. But if you want to be sure, just have a good look at the spines and you'll know I'm right.
