Not so great expectations for an orphaned hedgehog called Rip
A short story of smoke and sense
Rip, the young hedgehog, did not know what smoke was but he knew it was bad; very bad. All the ancestors that he carried in his mind, his bones and his spines said that the smell of smoke was very, very bad. He was in a hutch on the ground floor of Herichon Hall, where he was being fostered back to fitness after being found freezing in a churchyard next to a stone marked R.I.P.
Rip knew he had to move, but he was confused because the only way he could go was the way from which the smoke smell was coming. He’d been lost in long sleep, and it had taken a great effort to shake himself awake.
Fortunately, the fire had started high above him and by chance he’d been in that part of long sleep when hedgehogs sometimes emerge from hibernation for a short break. He was nearer wakefulness than hibernation and hence the very faintest thread of smoke was enough to be his get-out-of-bed alarm. He slowly rustled through his bedding and out of the nest box into the cage where his food usually was. There was no breakfast this time, but a strong smell of timber toasting. To his surprise, his whiskers told him that the cage grille was no longer there, but he didn’t know if he should step out. Things did not smell good out there.
He hesitated at the edge of his cage. He twitched his slightly bent nose upwards. Smoke. What was smoke? Smoke was bad. Where was the smoke? Smoke was not far away. Which way? That way. And that way. And the other way. There was no way that he could safely go.
Some small part of Rip’s mind suddenly decided that he should return to sleep. He turned about and waddled towards his nestbox. By pure chance a downdraught from the staircase rippled along the corridor, caught on the roof of his hutch and sent a particularly thick tendril of carbon under his ceiling. It curled against the nestbox wall and seared straight into Rip’s nostrils. It stopped him in his nest-ward track and turned him back. He went again to the edge of his cage.
Rip might have been concerned for the hogs in the other hutches, but hedgehogs are never concerned for other hogs, unless they are their own hoglets. He was not even concerned for the charming Erinacea, or by the bully Grainneog. He was only concerned for himself. Rip was not selfish. Hedgehogs cannot be selfish, just like they cannot be generous. Neither is in their nature.
All of Rip’s senses were screaming emergency! It was time to stop hedging and find a hedge.
Rip stepped into the smoke. He had the sense to press his snout close to the wooden floor. This had two immediate benefits. Firstly, the air was coolest and cleanest there, and secondly, it put him in close contact with trails he recognised. Mice and cats and rats had been there.
He began to hear burning. Rip had never seen a fire and so he had no idea what it was that his ears were detecting, but he didn’t like the sound. It was loud and sudden like the sound of something pounding through undergrowth. Things that did that kind of motion were to be avoided. Something might be coming to get him, and while most creatures could be dealt with by furling into a sphere of spikes, badgers had ways of bettering that. It didn’t sound like a badger, but then it didn’t sound like anything Rip had heard before.
He detected Erinacea’s trail, but it led towards the smell of soot and the sound of the unknown. He would not follow it this time. The cats’ and rats’ trails all led the other way. They all headed towards the freshest air, the direction from which a draught of increasing strength was coming, but Rip was still conflicted. So strong was the smell of smoke it began to overwhelm him, and despite the draught it rose and tumbled and swirled in different directions, sometimes cutting right across his path and making him divert. The sounds of cracks and snaps increased and there were thumps and bangs too. His snout detected a new sensation, not a scent or smell, but a feeling: heat.
Rip’s throat began to hurt, and he started breathing much more rapidly. Suddenly his senses were all aligned. He turned his nose towards the coolest, freshest air and aimed his ears at the sound of the chilly breeze. He dashed towards the door; but the door was closed. He could smell the wonderful aroma of cold, wet soil. His whiskers fizzed with the flow of damp oxygen, but he could not get out. He pushed his nose under the gap at the base of the door, but it only went a quarter of the way to his eyes. There was no way through.
Smoke was now crawling across the ceiling in his direction and tumbling down the door to splay across his back. He worked his way along the base of the door but the gap beneath it became only a little larger. He was trapped. He’d have to find another way out.
In the end it was the most unexpected thing that offered hope. It was the scent that he would normally never have chosen to follow. It was the smell of the bully hog, Grainneog. Just as he was about to head back into the burning building, he smelled the bully’s pawprints. A part of Rip’s brain nudged him into realising that if one hog had gone that way, another could do so. He followed the pawprints to the door to discover that they didn’t go along it, or under it. They went up it.
Following his nose, Rip suddenly saw, at the height of a hedgehog above him, a flap swinging gently, smelling thickly of cat and pushed by that super-sweet wind that he so desired to be in. He scrambled towards it, clawing at the wood and managed to get his snout, his eyes, and half his head into the gap. It was the kind of climb he was not designed for, and his back legs flailed frantically, as his front paws grabbed and clawed. He wriggled, twisted and bristled.
If only he could get a grip, he would be free.
Extracted from Great Hedgepectations
Suitable for adults and older children (10 years and above).
This excerpt, adapted from the Beneath the bonfire chapter, has been edited and amended for stand-alone context. It was featured in the Lancashire Post newspaper on 15th November 2025.
Click here Great Hedgepectations for more information, and for purchasing details.
All proceeds are passed on to Leyland Hedgehog Rescue.
To read about the inspiration for the book, see my earlier post: A tale of two piggies
Great Hedgepectations will be on sale with my twelve other titles (4 novels, 3 story collections, 4 plays, 1 non-fiction) and Fly on the Wall’s Modern Gothic anthology at SOUTH PLANKS farm on Saturday 13th December 2025 from 10am to 3pm.
Credits
Original artwork
‘There was no way he could safely go’ illustration: Curious Hedgehog by Helen Worthington.
‘He’d have to find another way out’ illustration: Hedgehog by Emma Elise Ritson.
The two illustrations bookend the text of the novel by kind permission of the artists.
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