A Prickly Assault
A New Zealand man has been arrested for assaulting a teenager with a weapon. Now while this might not normally be all that big news, the weapon of choice made it into global news. One does not often read of assault with a deadly hedgehog, after all.
"It hit the victim in the leg, causing a large, red welt and several puncture marks," police Senior Sgt. Bruce Jenkins said Monday. The teen did not need medical treatment, he added.
The Herald on Sunday newspaper reported that it was not known whether the hedgehog was dead or alive at the time of the attack, but that it was dead when collected as evidence.
There is, of course, more to this story than the report indicates. First of all, hedgehogs are not native to New Zealand and are actually a rather severe pest there. They are causing immense damage to native species. They are also, according to that article, good eating. W can already see a smart lawyer trying to get the hedgehog hurling hooligan off on the claim that he was either eradicating a pest or offering a gift of food that was misunderstood. But we here at Blue Crab Boulevard are having none of that. This is a shocking violation of hedgehog etiquette. Everyone knows that hedgehogs are never hurled. They are only to be struck firmly with a flamingo to send them sailing. Not that this is all that easy to do.
UPDATE: Daily Mail article on the same crime.
Animals, World news | Gaius Monday, 7 April , 2008
By BlogDog, Monday, 7 April , 2008 @ 9:44 pm
Was the ‘edgehog named Spiny Norman? A well-known criminal ‘e is!