How a baby hedgehog stole my heart

Who would have thought that I could lose my heart to a little baby hedgehog? To be honest, I had never seen a hedgehog before last Thursday evening. I had heard of them, but they were mostly small creatures who populated children’s books; The Tale of Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle in the book by Beatrix Potter comes to mind. Beatrix Potter used her pet hedgehog Tiggy-Winkle as inspiration for her story. It is so coincidental that we were just in Beatrix Potter country—England’s Lake District--on vacation. Last Thursday evening we found an adorable baby hedgehog (pinnsvin in Norwegian) on our way home from the boat, either abandoned by its mother or perhaps mother and baby got separated by accident. It was struggling to survive, so we took her home, washed her and fed her with some sugar water, after talking to the hedgehog experts at Pinnsvinhjelpen.no. They suggested we feed her cat food, egg yolk mixed with sugar water, and lactose-free heavy cream, and emphasized that she needed to be kept warm during the night. So we followed their advice and the following morning (Friday) she was awake and hungry. A visit to Jette at Pinnsvinhjelpen in Ski on Saturday afternoon was very productive; she gave us dry cat food (among other useful items) that she told us to mix with hot water so that it got mushy. She was certain that Hedgie (the name we gave the little hedgehog) would love this mix, and she was so right. Hedgie not only liked to eat this, but she ‘anointed’ herself with small bits of it; self-anointing is a hedgehog behavior that is not well understood. Hedgehogs will place small bits of chewed food on their backs; possible explanations are that this is a way of perfuming themselves, or that they like the taste of something new and this is a way of acknowledging that. Whatever the reason, it is humorous to watch them do this, and I filmed her doing this while she ate her cat food mush (http://youtu.be/kPgHYgTCdwA).

I wasn’t prepared for how attached I got to this little creature. She stole my heart with her wobbly gait, desire to be held, desire to snuggle and to burrow into the crook of your arm, how she would fall asleep in your hand, her cute little face, her trusting nature, her sweetness, her wild scent. Mealtimes were a treat—just to watch her tramp around in the cat food mush and then afterwards to dip her in lukewarm water to wash off most of what was stuck to her. She was with us until Sunday afternoon, at which time we drove her to her new home, a farm in southwest Norway, where her new family lives. Here there will be a garden for Hedgie to wander around in eventually, and possibly there will be other hedgehogs to join her at some point. Perhaps Hedgie will become a mother herself one day. That would be a good thing, since these little creatures are on the endangered species list here in Norway, and are now protected by law. It is possible to keep them as indoor pets, but it would not be fair to them. In our case, we would not be able to offer her a garden or even a terrace, and that would not be best for her. But how I wanted to keep her.

It’s not surprising that I’d never seen a hedgehog before; they are not native to the Americas. And even though hedgehogs have thousands of spines on their backs like porcupines, they are not related to them at all. They have more in common with shrews according to what I’ve read online. Hedgehogs are omnivorous, meaning that they will eat berries and melon as well as insects, snails (e.g. the brown snails that infest many of the gardens in east Norway) and frogs. They can live for up to seven years. They are nocturnal animals; born blind, their eyes will open fully at around four weeks. Hedgie was about three weeks old when we found her, so she would open her eyes briefly from time to time. She weighed 100 grams last Thursday; her new family just informed me that her weight is up to 105 grams, a good sign. She is eating and she is happy. And that makes me happy, even though yesterday when we came home to an empty apartment—without Hedgie—I was not at all happy. I missed her incredibly. I’m posting some photos of her; it won’t take you long to figure out why I lost my heart to her.

In memory of a good man

Do not stand at my grave and weep

by Mary Elizabeth Frye

Do not stand at my grave and weep
I am not there. I do not sleep.
I am a thousand winds that blow.
I am the diamond glints on snow.
I am the sunlight on ripened grain.
I am the gentle autumn rain.
When you awaken in the morning's hush
I am the swift uplifting rush
Of quiet birds in circled flight.
I am the soft stars that shine at night.
Do not stand at my grave and cry;
I am not there. I did not die. 

--------------------------------

In memory of my friend Jean's father, Jim, who passed away at 97 this past Wednesday. May he rest in peace. I know he is together now with his wife. Sometimes Jean and I would comment, when we visit Sleepy Hollow cemetery, that her parents' grave is right near my parents' grave, and that perhaps they have all met each other now and are together in heaven, happy and at peace. I hope so. 

Watching the zombie world war unfold

World War Z. I saw this film the night it had its premiere in Oslo (July 11^th) at the Colosseum in Oslo. Packed theater. Lights go down. The film starts. Normal family life for the first ten minutes, with Brad Pitt as Gerry Lane, who used to work as an investigator for the United Nations, and who now seems to be a stay-at-home dad, making his kids pancakes for breakfast. And then they’re in their car, he and his wife and two children, stuck in traffic on a Philadelphia city street. Normal life ends right here. All hell breaks loose in Philadelphia in a scene that is guaranteed to make you feel like you’re climbing endlessly to the top of a roller coaster hill followed by an unpleasant ride down, only to start on the next climb. That’s how the film continues for almost two hours. An intense, relentless, horrific ride to the finish. The final five minutes of the film resemble the first ten minutes—family togetherness, in this case, a reunion. In between, you’ve got to be made of stone not to be affected by some of the scenes that pop out at you (literally, thanks to the 3-D): the stewardess-turned-zombie moving on from economy class to the front of the plane on the plane ride from and to hell after having been bitten by a stowaway zombie, as well as the scene in the WHO facility in Cardiff Wales, where the former head of the lab, now a zombie, tries to ‘understand’ what happened to his prey (Gerry) who has injected himself with a deadly pathogen in order to camouflage himself from the zombies. This zombie won’t attack Gerry because the pathogen makes the prey sick and the zombies can smell sickness which they avoid.

The film has some similarities to other films/TV series in this genre: 28 Days Later (the fast-moving zombies, how quickly people ‘turn’ after having been bitten, and the apartment hallway scene where they climb the stairs to flee the zombies), Resident Evil (the suspenseful lab/facility scenes), The Walking Dead (the dimly-lit corridor scenes with zombies waiting to attack just around the corner), and a few others. But it’s on its own when it comes to some specific scenes: zombies swarming and piling up on each other like insects in order to scale the huge wall in Israel erected to keep them out, and the unbelievable plane scene come to mind. I think what sets this film apart is the relentlessness of the zombie hordes and the sheer numbers of zombies. Cities are overrun in minutes. There is nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. There is no time to hatch a plot, to follow it through. Panic ensues immediately among the crowds of people trying to flee. You’ve got to think on your feet, and if you don’t keep moving, as Gerry points out, you’re dead. Meaning you’re a zombie.

There are some implausible scenarios. One of them is when the plane crashes in the mountains of Wales and Gerry awakens and finds himself wounded and dripping blood. The female Israeli soldier he’s traveling with, Segen (played by Daniella Kertesz), who has had her arm hacked off by Gerry after having been bit by a zombie, has also survived. For a brief second, it looks as though she may transform. But she doesn’t. They both walk the distance it takes for them to reach the WHO research facility in Cardiff that is their intended destination. But my question is--why wasn’t there a horde of zombies attracted to the site of the plane crash? The zombies are apparently attracted by noise, and wouldn’t a crashing plane make a lot of noise? The other is when Gerry and Segen are walking very slowly through town on their way to the WHO facility, her supporting him since he is having problems walking. Where are the zombies? Or is Cardiff a zombie-free zone? It’s not made clear, or if it was, I missed it. They had ample time to reach the facility, something that seems rather out of tune with the rest of the film. Additionally, Gerry is losing blood fast, something the zombies would definitely register.

Once inside the facility though, they meet a team of scientists who are very skeptical to their presence; they want to know why they’ve come. Gerry explains his theory about using pathogens to camouflage the living from the ‘undead’, and they agree that his theory is worth testing. However, there are zombies wandering the halls of the wing of the lab building where the pathogens are stored; they are rather sluggish due to the lack of prey. They became zombies because the lead researcher accidentally infected himself with the blood of a zombie. And that led to his attacking other staff members; the uninfected managed to seal off this wing to keep the undead out.  

I’m halfway through the book of the same name by Max Brooks. I’d have to describe the tone of the book in much the same way—relentless and creepy, but the relentlessness and creepiness are spread out over many pages and the story unfolds gradually through the voices of the different people interviewed, who inform about what they have witnessed in a matter-of-fact tone. The book and the film are very different in this respect, as there is no ‘main’ character like Gerry in the book. But the ever-increasing paranoia and the shocking events are similar; the paranoia is perhaps more pronounced in the book than in the film. And at least with the book, I can put it down when I’ve had enough for an evening. Unless you close your eyes in the theater, it’s hard to escape what’s going on. At certain points, I had to remind myself that it was a film, to breathe normally. It occurred to me that World War Z is not a film for the kiddies or the weak of heart (just like roller coaster rides generally). I know I needed a few days to calm down after having seen it. I wonder if Brad Pitt let his kids watch this one?

Classic postcards of Tarrytown's treasures

A set of very old postcards of Tarrytown's architectural and historical treasures was among the items my father had in his collection of letters and documents, probably purchased during his teenage years. The postcards are undated, but must be from the 1930s, for several good reasons. The Lyndhurst postcard states that it is the residence of Mr. and Mrs. Finley J. Shepard. Mrs. Shepard was none other than Helen Gould, the daughter of railroad magnate Jay Gould who owned Lyndhurst until his death in 1892, at which point Helen took charge of the estate. She passed away in 1938. Additionally, another postcard is of the beautiful Warner Library, construction of which started in 1928; the dedication ceremony was held in 1929, and my best guess is that artistic renderings of the library flourished during the 1930s. My father was born in 1918 in Tarrytown and would have been a teenager during the 1930s; assuming that he would not have started collecting such cards until he was twelve or thirteen years old, it makes sense that these postcards are from that time. Just like the Cambridge postcards, the front sides of the Tarrytown postcards state specifically what is depicted on them, which I find very useful.

Classic postcards of Cambridge and Cambridge University

As I mentioned in an earlier post, my father was stationed in England during WWII. I recently sorted through correspondence and photos belonging to my late parents and found a set of 'twelve hand coloured postcards of the latest local views' of Cambridge, a city my father visited in January 1944. I scanned them in and am posting them here. He wrote on the back of one of the postcards that he had 'seen all these places'. There are two different messages from the Prime Minister of England that alternate on the back sides of these postcards. The first is "This is a time for everyone to stand together, and hold firm!"; the second is "Let us all strive without failing in faith or in duty". Words of inspiration from Winston Churchill, who was the prime minister (the second of three) during the war.

A poem by William Wordsworth

I wandered lonely as a cloud

I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed---and gazed---but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils. 

(written in 1804 by William Wordsworth, when he had seen the daffodils blooming around Ullswater Lake in the Lake District)

A walk around Derwentwater Lake

The eight-mile walk around Derwentwater Lake in the Lake District took us about four hours to complete, with a few stops along the way to rest, appreciate the beautiful landscape, watch the ducks, take photos, and consult the guide book. I didn't want to hurry my way through this lovely walk. We started out at the Derwentwater Marina and continued counterclockwise around the lake, ending at the Theatre by the Lake (for a good idea of the walk route, scroll down to see the map: http://www.lakedistrict.gov.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0006/171987/Derwentwater-LUG-2012.pdf).

Derwentwater marina

mossy tree roots--look like green feet

Derwentwater cruise on a Keswick launch 

For more information about Derwentwater Lake, you can visit: http://www.lakedistrict.gov.uk/visiting/placestogo/explorederwentwater. And for information about the Keswick launch cruise, go to: http://www.keswick-launch.co.uk/