The Attack of the Bloody Hedgehog

Cute, harmless pet or vicious Hell-creature?

When I was in the first grade, I tripped over a wooden stake in my backyard. A nail that was sticking out of that stake scraped across my foot, and sliced through the skin just below my big toe. I can remember looking down as the blood started to coat my glittery pink Jelly shoe, and in a daze of confusion and fear, running inside the house for help. My mom, probably even more freaked out than I was, threw me into the car and sped off toward the Medi-Quick in a neighboring town. The doctor gave me seven stitches (“6”, which was my age, “plus one to grow on,” he told me) when I got there. On the top of my right foot, I still have a scar that resembles a fossil imprint of an ancient centipede.

I was never very adventurous as a kid. In truth, I spent most of my free time inside reading a book, or cautioning my little brother against risky behaviors like jumping off of small sheds or petting stray dogs. I never sustained any broken bones or experienced any notable brushes with death. The gash on my foot and subsequent stitches are probably the worst childhood injury I endured, and honestly, that in of itself is not a very exciting story. How I came to trip over the stake in the backyard, however, is a little more noteworthy.

My family and I had moved into our brand new house a few weeks earlier, and everyone was just beginning to settle into the place. On this particular day, my mom asked me to take a bag of rotten apples out to the burning barrel (A sidenote for those deprived of a redneck upbringing: Our house was located in a rural area of Arkansas that didn’t offer waste removal services at that time, so we had to burn our trash in a metal drum, hence the sophisticated term “burning barrel”). After a good deal of whining about not wanting to go outside, I finally obliged and took off through the French doors that led out to our backyard. The burning barrel was located at the very edge of our yard, and behind it the endless brown rows of bare cotton fields spread out in every direction. The walk from the back door to the barrel was roughly fifty to sixty feet in a straight line. As I surveyed the carpet of grass just beyond our small concrete patio, my imagination took over, and not in a pleasant rainbow and unicorn kind of way.

A flash of movement caught my eye, and I saw a trail of uprooted dirt and grass as it formed across the backyard. Suddenly, up from the ground, a hedgehog appeared. It was moving in a frantic and jerky fashion, and as it came closer, I realized why. The hedgehog’s spiked tips were soaked with blood, and its back had been maimed. I quickly deduced that this unfortunate creature had been in some sort of accident with a lawnmower, and now, he was hungry for revenge. As the demonic hedgehog darted toward me, I actually heard him squeal.

At this point, it is important to know that none of this actually happened. No hedgehog, living or dead, not even a stray leaf blowing in the wind, had triggered my nightmarish vision. In fact, I never owned, nor knew anyone who had owned, a hedgehog as a pet, and as far as I know, they don’t roam free in the flatlands of the Deep South. My little warped brain thought up this entire scene from scratch, and sadly, at six years old, it all felt horrifyingly real, or at least plausible.

Needless to say, I would have preferred taking my chances with a slightly miffed mother before crossing the yard at that moment, but we’d been through similar instances before, and I knew she would just make me face my fear anyway when I told her what had happened. I decided to be brave on my own this time. I whispered to myself that there was nothing to be afraid of, wiped my damp palms on my cut-off jean shorts, and steeled myself for the walk across the yard. I focused solely on the burning barrel and tried my hardest not to let any thoughts of the hedgehog enter my mind. I was doing pretty well, keeping my eye only on my destination, and my mind free of spiny mammals. What I didn’t realize, however, was that, in my direct path, a marker had been left at the edge of the concrete for the construction workers to pour the foundation of the patio. I never saw it coming as the wooden stake caught my foot.

For a couple of years after this incident, I had some recurring visions of the hedgehog when I had to go into the backyard, though none of them were quite as extreme. Even as an adult, my imagination occasionally turns on me in various ways. Every time I have routine blood work done, for example, I’m convinced that I have whatever it is they are testing for, and I become obsessed with finding out everything I possibly can about the condition, as well as my lab results. My husband affectionately refers to me “The Doomsayer” when I start in with my outlandish worst-case scenarios.

I suppose I’m kind of glad that I have this scar on my foot because it serves as useful reminder when I start to conjure up wild conspiracies. I can look down and remind myself that, while a vivid imagination is a gift, if I spend too much time in my own weird thoughts, I will end up missing out on the real things in life, good and bad.

So in closing, I'd just like to say that if any of you out there find yourself being overly paranoid and/or irrational at times, just remember this: If you’re too preoccupied with imaginary bloody hedgehogs, you’re likely to trip over the wooden stake right in front of you…feel free to use that quote if it ever becomes appropriate.