Part I – New Years IHOP

Disclaimer: dear readers, we fully understand that as this is a hedgehog blog, and as such, content should feature and focus on hedgehogs, and in particular our favorite hedgehog.  Please note that the following post is only minimally hedgehog related, but serves as critical bridge into further posts that will highlight hedgehog related antics, hijinks, adventures, perils, peregrinations, and other words for the kinds of things these blog posts tend to include.  It primarily features a close personal friend to our hedgehog.

Disclaimer disclaimer: Please note that the previous disclaimer was very wordy for a disclaimer leading into a blog post.  If you aren’t interested in reading long disclaimers, feel free to skip the previous section.

Disclaimer disclaimer disclaimer: Its come to the editor’s attention that it’s unlikely a reader would encounter the disclaimer disclaimer until after encountering the disclaimer which would make it unlikely that the reader would actually be able to skip the passage in question.  We apologize for the inconvenience.

Post disclaimer: There are numerous disclaimers that could be posted about previous disclaimers but in the interest of proceeding to content rather than discussions about content we will pause in our disclaiming for the time being.  If critical disclaiming is required, please rest assured that we will make sure to disclaim critical issues.

Post disclaimer disclaimer:  Sorry, this really was just gratuitous.

So anyway, we drove back.  It was rainy.  We past the Mississippi visitor center but it really seemed very cold, unwelcoming, and a generally bad scene for a hedgehog, a giraffe puppet, a stuffed frog, or humans.  We didn’t take a picture to allow the active imaginations of our readers the opportunity of building a more dramatic scene in the imagination.

So we drove non-stop to Pearl City Louisiana, which interestingly was before the Louisiana Visitor’s Center, as if the Visitor Center was trying to tell you something about just how interesting that place was.

Disclaimer: The Louisiana Visitor Center isn’t very honest, it’s actually a lovely gem of a town.

We pulled in, set up Princess’s home in our motel and then realized that it was New Years Eve and we needed to eat.  We went to find a place to eat working around the picky Princess Sophie’s demands we eventually went to IHOP.  We could not bring Princess P. P. due to the institutional pet prejudice that prevent pets participation in potlucks, restaurants, and most eating establishments.

Man, that’s a lot of words before a single photo.  We are violating a basic rule of our blog – “show, don’t tell.”

We have an IHOP tradition, started by the current author of this piece, that when we get to the table, we take spoons and pour spoons full of syrup as a kind of IHOP aperitif.

Disclaimer: We’d seen Saving Mr. Banks recently and since then I’ve constantly had Mary Poppins songs lilting through my head, so please mentally accompany the following images with “a spoon full of syrup” to get a full sense of the experience.

Mmmm, Fancy likes syrup.

Not to be outdone, Kermit showed that he loved syrup.

Really loved it.

Delicious, delicious syrup.

After getting all hopped up on syrup, Fancy rehearsed for Annoying Private Ryan, while Kermit hopped in to help.

Kermit kept hopping into action.

Food came, and mortified children were briefly relieved until Fancy got hungry.

Princess Sophie kindly shared.

Ryan rudely interfered with Annoying Private Ryan rehearsals.

Briefly.

As we left, Fancy wished the poor staff a happy new year.

And with that, we were ready to go to bed for a very long drive, preparing for more blog posts that involved more hedgehogs and fewer disclaimers.