furze-pig

• furze pig, fuzz-pig, fuzz pig, vuz-peg

furze-pig (plural furze-pigs)

1. (West Country) A hedgehog.
   • 1884, Carnegie, William, “Winged Vermin”, in Practical Game Preserving‎, page 457:

     Wherever there be a gate, or even an apology for one, consisting of a gapway jammed full of a combination of what are mostly called brambles, the near neighbourhood of the same where it opens, or should open, on the field, is always a good place, and one that may well be taken advantage of, more especially if the furze-pig be the bait employed; while a nest of eggs neatly arranged on the top of an adjacent portion of the hedgerow, devoid of bushes, is equally likely to bring the crows into the gins set about for them.

   • 1982, Pugh, Sheenagh, “I think someone might write an elegy”, in Poetry Wales‎, volume 17, number 4:

     For mowdewart and marmot; for furze-pig / and parmaceti; for feline / and anserine; for Lawrence the tod.

   • 2017, Greenberg, KJ Hannah, “Preface”, in Can I Be Rare, Too?, Bards and Sages Publishing:

     It's not only writers who require creative accounts or an ability to connect discordant events, but most of the rest of everyone else, too, wants to sort fiends into parsimonious piles. In view of those desires, Can I be Rare, Too's sixty-four tales are one part canard, one part forced teleology, and several parts enthusiastic furze-pig. They are, also, one hundred per cent fun.