By Laura Grimes
After the first hedgehog/book club post went up, a super secret source sent me this story. I copied and pasted it here exactly as it was sent to me except that the names have been changed to protect the innocent, the guilty and the identity of my source. A background note: The source’s family had lived in a large rambly house before moving to a high-rise condo.
Soon after we moved to the condo, my son’s pet miniature hedgehog died. My son was 17. Our house had a big yard with about 30 old Carolyn Testout rose bushes, and we had always buried the little pets (hamsters, parakeets, etc.) under the roses, and I told the kids that when the roses bloomed a part of the pet’s spirit would be in them.
Well, of course there’s no place to bury a pet here. I was calling the veterinarian to ask her what to do, when my son emerged from his room to tell me that he was going to his friend’s house to bury the hedgehog. I assumed (as my son knew I would) that they were going to bury the hedgehog in the friend’s yard. So we wrapped the hedgehog in a silk scarf and put her in a shoe box, and my son’s friend picked him up.
Later, I found out that my son had decided to bury the hedgehog in Lone Fir Cemetery. That night, he and his friend took a shovel and went over there, but a police patrol car kept coming through (and of course were suspicious of two teenage boys), so they left. They then decided to bury her in Willamette National (“because she was a brave little hedgehog”), but couldn’t get in.
They went back to Lone Fir and the police were gone. So there, among all the city leaders and historical figures, lies a hedgehog — under a rose bush.
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RELATED POSTS:
- Prepping for book club and hedgehogging our bets
- Hedgehogging paid off, pickle swappage rolled in and other raucous tales from book club
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PHOTO: Lone Fir Cemetery in Portland, Ore., is a beautiful historic burial ground that is on the National Register of Historic Places./Wikimedia Commons