And now I’m on the floor, laughing at the bizarreness of the situation. Flashlight flickers as Leif stomps in. Looking up at him, his face is full of bewilderment.
“I—I’m not sure what is going on,” he says, his voice a rasp. He reaches out a hand to help me up, trying not to blind me with the flashlight. Turning, we look at the bed, which is now full of glowing eyes beaming back at us.
“Squirrels? Too small for raccoons…”
Leif huffs a sigh, “Hedgehogs.” Okay, sure, that makes complete sense.
“There’s a lot of them.”
“Four,” he says in the same resigned voice.
Stepping slowly toward them, we get close enough to make out four really adorable shivering hedgehogs. My heart completely melts at the sight of them.
Leif, on the other hand, doesn’t seem to have the same heart-eye emojis beaming out of his head. He grunts and snorts at the sight of them before turning to me. “Are you hurt?” His chest still heaves.
Giggling, I shake my head no. “They look so cold!” I say, marching to the bathroom to find a towel for them. “Do hedgehogs hibernate?” I ask over my shoulder.
All I get in response is another grunt. I’m going to take that as an “I don’t know.” Pulling out two fluffy blue towels, I ignorethe images of Leif wearing nothing but a towel in my mind and slowly approach the bed.
One hedgehog sneezes and grunts at me as I approach. Funny how its communication is so similar to Leif’s. This one is slightly bigger than the others.
“Are you cold or is that a warning?” I whisper, smiling at them. Out of the corner of my eye, I see Leif standing at the foot of the bed, hands on his hips, studying the darling critters like they are wild mongrels, which they certainly are not.
Slowly, I get down on my knees and spread one of the towels out wide along the edge of the bed. The hedgehogs look at me. I look at them. I’m not sure how to go about this. Are they wild or just someone’s displaced pets? Loose in a blizzard on the Winter Solstice. Hmm.
Edging the towel toward them, they’re shivering still, and I desperately want to wrap them up and cuddle them. I can see water droplets on some of their quills—melted snow. When I get too close for their comfort, chaos erupts again.
One runs at me. Possibly knowing I had warmth? But it scares me all the same, and I squeak. That sets off the other three. They tear around the bed, making funny snuffling sounds.
By now I’ve recovered from my small fright, and I’m using the towel to attempt to catch one. Any of them. Towel in both hands, I pounce down on the bed. Again and again.
“I’m trying to help you,” I mutter with each pounce. Long gone is my cute whisper voice. Now I’m grunting with the effort. Dare I say, sweating? Ugh.
There’s a weird low rumble coming from the other side of the bed. Pausing long enough to look around, I realize it’s comingfrom Leif, who hasn’t moved from his station at the foot of the bed.
“Are you…laughing?” I ask, slightly incredulously, huffing to get a breath.
“Yes,” is the one word answer I get.
“Would you like to help me?”
“No.” Wow. This guy. More huffing, it sounds so un-sexy, but I guess it doesn’t matter because the bed now belongs to the wild hedgehogs of Moonfang Haven, I climb off the bed wondering how these tiny creatures even got up onto the bed in the first place.
“Addy, that was a valiant effort. But they don’t think they need saving. That’s something we had to learn in search and rescue training. It’s almost impossible to save someone who doesn’t want to be saved. But you can try to convince them. Let’s leave the towels. They’ll figure out how to stay warm. They’ve survived this long, after all.”
With that, he spreads the other towel on the opposite side of the bed, making a bit of a nest for them to burrow into if they so choose. He moves slowly and methodically. Not a single hedgehog sneezes at him or charges him like a bull. Without scaring them, he grabs two pillows and backs away from the bed.
“Come on, we’ll leave them in peace,” he says to me with a tenderness that surprises me. But then he turns and glares at the beasts one last time. “You’d better stay put,” he growls in a ferocious way that zings me throughout my core.
And with that weird threat to the adorable beady-eyed hedgehogs, he walks me out of the bedroom.
It should feel warm, calming—the fire merrily dancing in the hearth. Instead, it’s just more chaos.
Overturned chairs. Snow piles cover the entryway. An icy breeze blasts through my clothes as the door is wide open.
“Well damn,” is all he says as he throws the pillows on the sofa and closes the front door with a loud thud.
I shiver, pick up a candle from the table and light it, then search for the broom and dustpan to sweep up the snow.
