Crackle and Ouch

Little Ouch has been hanging around the kitchens a lot lately, and he is beginning to make himself useful. He started snuffling around the tower door, hoping for a glimpse of Urchin, waiting for his sisters, or hoping to find something helpful to do. (Both Ouch's sisters work here now. Furtle is very young, but Thripple, who is amazingly patient with her, lets her help.)

At first he just used to grub about finding worms and beetles for himself and his sisters, and then he asked me about what I needed in the kitchen and became very useful at finding berries for me. In the autumn all he had to do was wobble about in a hedge to come out covered with rosehips and blackberries, and he was very pleased with himself for being helpful. I always rewarded him with a few berries for himself. He's a bit like Hope at the same age. When winter came he'd bring fir cones, acorns, and any useful bits of root he could dig up. He's such a little thing, and it was so cold, so I'd bring him in to the kitchen for a hot cordial and a biscuit or some porridge.

At one time, if we were having roast chestnuts, we'd have to sit around piercing each one with a knife so that they didn't explode while cooking. That's a long and fiddly job when we have a whole Tower full of animals to cater for. Now we just put them in a basket and let Ouch roll about in them. It can be difficult pulling them off the prickles, though, because he says it tickles. A giggling hedgehog may be very sweet, but a giggling sharpest-hedgehog-on-the-island is downright dangerous. Ouch.