The Farmer & His Wife
John Taylor has a prickly problem.
I’M heading up to the stone field,” I shouted to Anne. “Would you like to come? I’m going in the buggy.”
“OK, John, I’ll be with you in a minute.” The buggy had been the deciding factor. I doubt if she’d have been as keen to walk all the way.
It was a beautiful evening and I’d suddenly decided to check on some sheep on our top ground. I hadn’t seen them for two days and I wondered if any were lame.
The field is called “stone field” after a huge rock, left when the ice went back up to the North Pole! You can sit on it and watch the boats sailing up and down the Forth.
We were on our way up a farm track when Anne gasped. “John, shut the engine off.” I did as she requested. “Look,” she said.
She pointed to a hedgehog scurrying up the track as fast as its four wee legs could carry it. We watched it scuttle through a gate into a field of barley. Not a sight of great importance, you might think, but we enjoyed spending a few moments watching it.
Once it had gone, we made our way to the stone field.
We were sitting on our rock, enjoying the view when Anne asked, “John, do you remember?”
It must have been 20 years ago, on a night when Anne went to play bridge with some of her friends in St Andrews. One of “the girls”, as Anne always referred to them, asked Anne if I would do her a great favour. She wanted to give her husband a hedgehog as a birthday present and she wondered if I could catch one for her.
I’ve heard of some odd birthday presents in my time, but a hedgehog takes the biscuit! The misguided bridge player thought it would be nice to have one in the garden, eating up the slugs and snails.
“It would come for its bowl of goat’s milk each morning,” she declared.
I promised Anne I would find one for her to deliver to St Andrews the following Friday.
Jip used to sniff them out, but quickly learned to keep her distance. Once, when she was younger, she’d tried to pick one up but had quickly backed away from its spiky coat.
By Tuesday night there was still no sign of a hedgehog anywhere. I was worried but was determined not to let Anne down after she had promised I would deliver the goods.
That evening, I went off to see one of the gamekeepers on an estate near Colinsburgh.
“Hedgehogs? Nae problem, John,” he assured me. “Like a pair – male and female?”
I wondered how he’d know, but had the common sense not to ask!
“Yes, please!” was all I said.