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Hello, fellow nature lovers. Tonight let’s begin with a rare treat: video footage of the New York hedgehog in its natural setting. Everyone gather around quietly now… and click on the image below… there she is…

Oh, isn’t she just something else, girls and boys? Such a gem of the wilderness. You can see that she’s used to the cameras, but none too keen on them when she’s just woken up. What a little angel.

She certainly loves her sleep.  The New York hedgehog is unique in that she likes a certain amount of noise, and to be bumped around a bit.  Too much quiet during the day and she’ll be awake and grumpy.  And you can carry her around with you and she’ll sleep like a log for hours, but if you stop walking for more than a couple minutes, there’s the grumpy little bear again!

This little critter’s name is Avery, though everyone around here calls her Bunny, and sometimes Pepper, or Peppermint.  It can be confusing.  Good thing she can’t understand a word we’re saying!  Yet!  Ha ha.  Ha.

Like many of her kind, she thrives on a diet of the bountiful local breast milk.  She weighs almost eleven pounds – or close to 5 kilos – and she’s just about ten weeks old.  For a while there, she was putting on nearly a pound a week!  How does she do it?  Calories, calories calories.  She’s looking for food every chance she gets.  Here she is, caught with her hand in the cookie jar!

Uh oh!  Booby trapped!

No harm done, though.  Just a little fun for the cameras.  What a rascal.

Here at the Taverner compound, pretty much the whole day revolves around the needs of this adorable little tyrant.  Between feeding, changing, and keeping her content when she’s not napping, there isn’t much time for her keepers to get much else done.  This is why they invented alcohol, girls and boys!  So the New York hedgehog’s keepers could cope!

Just kidding.  No need to call your parents.  Or child services.  Please sit back down, now.  Nancy, that means you.  Put down that cell phone and join the rest of us.  Good girl.  I wouldn’t want to have to tell your mother I know what she does on her “bingo nights”.  Never mind that.  We’re all friends here, right?

Where were we?  Oh yes, getting things done.  Well, Mr and Mrs Keeper returned the rented industrial strength breast pump today, and they’re back to using the noisy little angry electric bee.  We’ll see how that goes.  And Mr Keeper bought Mrs Keeper her Christmas present early!  A sexy little iPad mini!  True story!  Yes, he’s quite jealous, I can assure you.  But Mrs Keeper has been wanting an E-Reader so she has something to occupy her brain while Avery is hunkered in at the Milk Bar, and Mr Keeper wasn’t about to let Mrs Keeper spend good money on the bad rubbish they sell at Barnes & Noble, or on Amazon’s Kindle Fire, when we all know darned well that Mrs Keeper would end up wanting all the things those plastic gadgets won’t do, or can’t do at all well.  And believe me, he’s looked into it.  So, the iPad mini it was.  And Mrs Keeper loves it already.  Took it to bed with her.  Mr Keeper will just keep on lugging the dead weight of his Original iPad around until he blows his other knee, and he’ll like it just fine, see if he doesn’t.

Little Peppermint slept through the whole thing, of course.

So after that shopping excursion, they all returned to the compound, and enjoyed more delectable leftovers from Thanksgiving.  Mr Keeper had the luxury of working on some of the photos from the Italian honeymoon, and sent a few of them away to get printed on canvas.  Very nice.  Mrs Keeper, meanwhile, went to the considerable trouble of cooking up the turkey soup stock so Mr Keeper can invent Turkey Bacon Chowder sometime this week.  She’s very good to him.  Oh, my stars, youngsters, that chowder will be just… just wonderful.  Oh my, yes.

Now, run along, the lot of you!  This warden needs some shut eye.  Y’all come back now, y’here?