Personally, I do like a little bit of knowledge, after all someone clever once said something like “knowledge is power” and I also like the occasional famous quote, and one that tickles me is from a guy called Benjamin Franklin and it goes “In wine there is wisdom, in beer there is freedom, and in water there is bacteria”, sounds like a very wise man! He also went on and came up with another quote, “Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy”, what a great man indeed! 

 

And beer does, generally make us happy, until that moment when you overindulge and then, you learn all about it a bit later on (and often wish you hadn’t) and its strange when you reflect on it, our base desire to get simply shit faced and how we never seem to learn from the first, second, third and on and on, mistakes. 

 

There is a school of thought that thinks that evolution is in play here; this is the drunken monkey hypothesis, and it suggests that our deep-rooted almost a romantic like attraction to alcohol, is in fact not our fault. It’s thought that back before we even left the cradle of mankind: the Rift Valley, that our monkey ancestors developed a fondness for fermented fruit.  

As the overripe fruit fell to the floor and began to ferment, the natural sugars within start to convert to ethanol and it seems if this theory is correct, that I can blame last Saturday night, not to the amount of Peroni’s I sank but some primitive hairy monkey man from about 4 million years ago. That’ll do me! 

 

And it seems that I’m not alone in my fondness for the occasional alcoholic drink, but hedgehogs, really like it too and so we get to the reason for this blog. Drunken hedgehog day. Is it really true? Is there a Drunk Hedgehog Day and if so, why? Well it sounds like a good story and with all stories, there’s often a kernel of truth behind it. Back in time, in the Middle Ages it seems that over in Hungary, Drunken Hedgehog Day was a real thing! 

 

The story goes, that in the autumn and just after the harvest was gathered in by the peasant farmers, they had a lot of problems managing their pest control, back in those days, the pests were in the form of snakes, rats and mice, and even frogs were a big problem. Without any form of pest control and your entire harvest at risk, with the threat of starvation in the winter, how best to control these pests? 

 

A big part of medieval life was brewing, as they predominantly drank river and stream water which had to be boiled, they found out that throwing in things like hops and barley gave the water a great taste. Add to that a bit of yeast and boom, you’re brewing beer and we all know how wonderful that is! 

 

So, the peasants scooped up some of that windfall, manky and bruised fruit that our ancestors loved so much, they collected the fruit and put this into pots, steeped for a few weeks and then heated it and distilled the mush into hard liquor. They combined that we some of their home brew and together these two liquids became their source of pest control. 

 

For they had discovered that its not only monkeys and humans that like a tipple but hedgehogs of all creatures, as these animals like a drop of the hard stuff too. And rather like us, when hedgehogs get drunk, it can bring out a more unpleasant side of their nature. For it seems that hedgehogs are fiercely territorial and especially so when drunk, they become so bad tempered that they will attack just about any other creature that strays into their path. 

 

Armed with this knowledge, the Hungarians began a yearly traditional after harvest of locking up their farmyard animals, liberally placing bowls of booze around the holdings and getting the local hedgehog population smashed so that they would attack and drive off the pests that were encroaching on their harvested supplies. 

 

 

There’s only one thing left to say; and that’s here’s to beer. 

"Meditationes Sacrae"