A Hedgehog's Holiday
Created | Updated Feb 6, 2002
This really isn't my day. After rolling safely on to the hard shoulder after a nearly-fatal road accident, I find myself right in the heart of a lightning and thunderstorm. Lightning is what the big people (the animals that walk on two feet and get eaten up and digested by big monsters on the road) call an electric flash of light in the sky, and thunder is what they call the sound of the flash that comes soon afterwards. I find it a little confusing, and not to mention shocking!
First it starts to rain. Now, as a hedgehog, I have nothing against rain in particular, apart from my spines drooping a little. It doesn't hurt, and I can get a good drink of water from it. The problem with rain is that, when it rains, it really rains. Right in the middle of when I'm sipping water from a nearby puddle, gargantuan raindrops begin punching me in the back! I'm not the fastest hedgehog in the world, and I even doubt whether there is one you could call 'fast', but I'm crawling away into the nearest shelter.
Slight problem. I'm on a motorway. Junction 11 on the M4 to Reading. What do you find on motorways?
Go on, have a guess.
Not got it yet?
Enormous elongated monsters that have about six rollers on their base. There's about fifteen of them at a time, and the nearest safe haven is a Welcome Break on the opposite side of the motorway. I live in a little shed just outside of that service station.
The lightning is just getting worse. Forked lightning is the worst. It strikes the ground and gives off an awful bang. The rain's absolutely tipping down. It's all in-between my spines and over my snout. It's hard to see where everything is as well. It's foggy, and I get dazzled by the big monsters' eyes.
The thunder keeps ringing in my ears. The ground is slippery and hard to walk on. Good thing there's a traffic jam. I can walk between the monsters. You can hear them growling at me, as if saying, 'I'll eat you later, you pesky hedgehog'.
I've decided. I hate wet weather. My spines are as droopy as some kind of very droopy thing. My chances of getting out of this alive are second to none. Gusts of wind keep blowing, the rain shows no sign of stopping, the lightning keeps on coming, and the thunder keeps on thundering. I'm terrified.
Recap...
I'm a hedgehog, stuck in the middle of the M4 in the middle of the night in the middle of a thunderstorm in the middle of a massive panic attack.
I'm going to be a mouse when I get back home. My spines are so soaked with water, they've flattened out. This is more water than I need. Still raining, unfortunately. The only good thing is that I've managed to make it to the halfway point. The monsters are all around me, but can't get at me.
I can hardly breathe. The monsters are spewing poisonous gases of smoke at me. I'm going to curl up into a ball. That way, perhaps I can protect myself from them and rest at the same time.
Okay, have to start off again. A bolt of lightning just appeared above my head, and I'm still getting pelted with raindrops the size of stones. The future's looking very bleak for this hedgehog.
Must be a big monster convention. There's another traffic jam on this side of the motorway, but they are moving, even prowling across the road. Got to be careful. My eyes are full of rain and fog and flashes of lightning, and I'm even deafer from the thunder.
The rain is bouncing off the monsters as if they were trampolines. That's because of this shiny armour that protects them from the weather and predators. My spines only stop some predators, and they won't be spines when this rainstorm has finished.
Trudging in front of the monsters is scary, because you never know when they're going to move. A massive crash of thunder reverberates inside my fragile little ears for some time. I don't quite know how I'm going to hibernate after this chilly experience.
Here's a white line with a small gleaming bumpy thing. Reflects the monsters' eyes like a cat's eye. I'm going to call it a cat's eye, because it's very much like one. I'll sit here for a bit, it seems safer from the monsters, but not from the lightning.
Continuing on my dangerous journey, I realise that I'm a very lucky hedgehog. I have never heard of one single hedgehog which has managed to cross a motorway alive. Well, I'm not quite lucky yet, there's still one lane to go, and that's the one I'm dreading.
This lane appears to be moving faster than all the others, so here we go!
Stomp stomp stomp stomp stomp etc. . Almost to the hard shoulder!
BANG!
No, that wasn't your glorious storyteller getting run over. That was forked lightning and the thunder. I was blinded and deafened at the same time. Not a very nice thing to happen. I stopped in the middle of the road. Along came a monster and...
Well, I was surprised myself. This monster stopped just before it got to me. It made all the other monsters angry, because they don't like bad weather, thunderstorms and the like. It waited for me to get to the hard shoulder, then sped off again. Very nice. I was gobsmacked.
And now, towards the Welcome Break, and the abandoned shed (inhabited only by myself).
After that hazardous encounter, I've decided, that always check the weather before going out, and never think of going on holiday to that place again.
