Abigail had always liked hedgehogs, she didn’t know why. It might have been because she couldn’t eat them, due to their spiny armor, and thus was attracted to their unattainable deliciousness. But also, they were just so stinking cute: bumbling with their little beady black noses and eyes, goofy and loquacious, when they weren’t asleep in an adorable and impenetrable ball.
“Hi, Abigail!” Jamie the hedgehog piped up from where he was burrowing after some grubs under the edge of a yew bush. He had sensed her perched on the oak branch above admiring him. “How’s tricks?”
“I should be asking you. The men were stomping all about your burrow today.”
“Were they?” Jamie lifted a cute back foot and scratched behind a cute ear. “Didn’t notice.”
“‘Course you didn’t, lamb,” Abigail chortled. Just then, Armand swooped in to settle next to her on the branch.
“Hi, Armand!” Jamie hailed him chipperly. Armand, who did not share his mate’s fascination with the Erinaceinae, grunted a greeting and turned to Abigail.
“You saw the X on our tree?”
“I did. I was surveying out here on the west edge by the burrows for more marks. But nothing. They spent plenty of time out here but seem to have decided that cutting a few large trees is better than all the small ones they were taking before.”
“What are we going to do?”
“Your girl’s not coming through,” a voice as sleek and sharp as one of Jamie’s spines broke in, and Abigail turned to see Melinda had arrived with one of her pups. Having apparently never seen a hedgehog before, the pup went straight over and started nosing curiously at Jamie.
“Hey! That tickles!”
Melinda ignored them and fixed her glowing eyes on the owls. “Now that it’s your home on the chopping block,” and it would have been hard to describe the toothy smile that punctuated that sentence as anything other than gloating, “Are you still going to counsel patience? Try to talk to them some more? They’re not listening. And unless you take more drastic measures, you’ll soon see how it feels to be homeless. At Christmas no less.”
The pup yelped just then, having discovered for himself the limits of prodding a hedgehog with a sensitive fox nose. Jamie giggled again, this time perhaps with an undertone. Armand sighed. “I just don’t see how putting the men out of their homes is going to save ours, or keep the peace.”
“Keep the peace,” Melinda spat. “Spoken like an animal who’s never been worn as a scarf.” But then she too heaved a deep sigh and sat in the snow, curling her luxurious tail around her haunches. “Look, you two, the only peace I care about is among us. We’ve been neighbors for a long time; even though we hunt the same prey, we’ve maintained a balance that has worked for both sides. But there are limits,” and here she looked meaningfully to her pup, who was licking the drops of blood from his nose. Then, she looked back to the owls; what they saw in her eyes this time was sadness, and resolve. “I can stop them from cutting your tree down, at least this Christmas and perhaps forever. And for all of our sakes, I will.” Then she hissed for her pup, who shot Jamie a wounded glance before returning to his mother’s side, and disappeared into the yew.
The Rookery 