When I told squirrel about yesterday I just wanted her to shout at me, that would have made it feel easier. Unfortunately being squirrel she didn’t. She just put her arm round as much of my neck as she could get it round and said “There, there Alfie. I know it’s hard. I know how disappointed you are and hopefully hedgehog will understand that too.” It just made me feel much worse, after all I shouldn’t just be thinking about how I feel in all this. So I sloped off into the wood to write a letter to hedgehog. I can at least try getting it to him before he comes out. This is what I wrote.
“My dearest hedgehog,
I am so ashamed of the way I behaved on Saturday. I am so very sorry. I am extremely disappointed that our planning application has been turned down more because it was such an important step in your life than for anything for me. I simply didn’t know how to tell you as I realised how disappointed you would be. Please find it in your heart to forgive me. I am still only a young puppy and have so much to learn. Your friendship is as important to me as mine is to you. I am sure that if we work together we can find some way of making the Forest Council change their minds. I will be waiting by the prison gates for you at 3pm on the 3rd of May. I have prepared a lovely pile of leaves for you to live in, in the corner of the garden and my mistress has promised that they won’t disturb them. Please come home with me.
Your ever faithful friend
Alfie”
Then I folded it up and went to find the nearest magpie to send it first class post. I really don’t know what else I could have said. I marked the envelope as urgent and put a note saying there was nothing valuable or shiny in it so there was not point the magpie doing anything other than deliver it promptly. Then I spent the rest of the day kicking my heels in the wood not really knowing what to do with myself. I popped home for the odd dog biscuit now and again and to check if the moles had advanced any further but all was quiet. The problem with my regularity of queuing up outside the biscuit cupboard is that my mistress has got wise to it and only ever gives me half a biscuit at a time, something to do with keeping my waistline trim. Unfortunately I don’t seem to get much say in it. I really must learn to open the cupboards myself. The other bad news was that my mistress showed my master how to get me to sit by only pretending to have a biscuit in her hand. He has adopted the technique but is worried in case my mistress does anything similar to him but he just doesn’t realise it.