The Happiest Hedgehog in Cambodia!

I originally typed this up a few days ago...and when I went to publish it the next morning, the little guy was gasping his last. That's why you don't type anything up, I guess.

I was and still am incredibly sad about this turn of events. I thought I would skip the entry entirely, but then I thought I'd like to show you a little bit about pet ownership in Cambodia. I'd also like to do something to honor his memory. He brought me such intense happiness, for such a short time.

The original text is below.

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I have a confession to make: I am a small animal addict. As you may have gathered from my obsessive love for abandoned baby sparrows and wingless butterflies, I'm the sort of person who needs a pet or two around the house to feel complete. Every day, I walk home from school past the little curbside petstores. I have to touch every animal in every cage, talk to each, tell it how wonderful, special, and loveable it is, and then walk away dreaming about which one EXACTLY I will buy when I remember to bring enough money.

I'm like one of those mentally-ill pigeon ladies in New York City who just sort of lives under a cloud of cooing birds, carrying all her possessions in a large bag: I just like having animals around me, to a creepy and excessive degree.

Well, a couple of weeks ago, one of the petstores had a new cage, filled with four tiny spikey things: BABY HEDGEHOGS. Each day, I planned my strike: one of those insanely cute little balls of quills would be MINE. I just had to amass enough pocket change and read up on how to keep them.

In a couple of days, one disappeared, then the other a couple of days later. Starting to panic, I returned to the store to choose among the remaining two.

By this time, I'd read that male hedgehogs make more laid-back pets than females, who tend to get nestie. (I've kept pet rats before and know how this can be with them). Luckily, one was male.

Unluckily, though, he was albino (read: ugly and possum-like). He was also in bad need of medical attention, having his right arm badly injured. It had been cut to the muscle all the way around. Seeds were matted into his bloody fur. His arm was swollen and immobile.

You know what that means--the little alarm bells went off in my brain: it needs you, holyrockthrower...IT NEEDS YOU. So I bought it.

You know what? Hedgehogs are expensive, in the US and in Cambodia, too. I basically had no spending money all week since I spent it all on the animal (I know, I could just go to the bank, but I'm trying to save up for a motorbike), and I had to eat slices of bread all week...but he is MINE. ALL MIIIINE!

Anyway, I've got some pictures. His injury is healing, and he's pretty much the cutest little baby I've ever seen.

Sleeping baby.

His little piggy nose.

Ugly and possum-like. (Damn right he's between my breasts.)

Aww...

Here's a video I made of him:

I Too Can Blame George W. Bush for Everything

I regret to inform the world that Baby has died.

You might think that I fed him improperly, causing him to choke and develop pneumonia. Or you might think that I simply fed him the wrong sorts of food. Or maybe it had nothing to do with me, but the parents simply rejected him because he was diseased in the first place.

You might think that. But actually it was George W. Bush's fault.

Because George W. Bush blew up my house.

Despite the fact that Bush has been out of office for the last two and a half years...despite the fact that now that Obama holds office and we're supposed to blame him for everything...and despite the fact that I am virtually unknown among the US citizenry, let alone to the US government...despite all this, George W. Bush launched a major airstrike on my place of residence last evening, demolishing the building and killing Baby.

Spokesmen say the attacks are retaliation for my representing Libya in the Model Arab League in 2006 and for time spent in Yemen speaking Arabic in 2007. Spokesmen further cite my involvement in Cambodian expatriate life, as the local Western expat community is composed solely of fugitives, convicts, and pedophiles.

The missiles struck as I sat grading my papers last evening. They tore through my roof and demolished all four floors of the apartment complex in a fiery torrent of doom, leaving a nothing but a pile of smoldering rubble in their wake.

Somehow uninjured, I crawled out from the rubble, crying my horror and despair to whatever gods may be.

I called out to Baby, who had been asleep in his nesting box. But his terrified peeping did not return my frantic cries. For my baby bird, who brought me so much light and joy, lay crushed beneath the rocks.

He was laid to rest in a pot with a dead rose bush morning next.

Spokesmen say no other civilians were injured the attacks, presumably because they were out dealing drugs or in brothels. The landlady could not be reached for comment.

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*Although this story is fiction, in no way shape or form should that detract from the underlying truth of this narrative.