The internet is full of cute photos of hedgehogs with flowers.  I found one years ago and thought, “oh, what a cute photo of a hedgehog with a flower.”  Here it is:

I made it my AOL Instant Messenger icon.  This was many years ago.  I cropped it some so it was mostly the little face and flower.  You don’t need to know all these details.  It was the beginning of me wanting a hedgehog, though.  Interestingly Princess Pricklepants does bear a striking resemblance to that mystery flower-bearing hedgehog of yore.

Anyway, we were excited to have the opportunity to take pictures of our hedgehog with a flower.  I was, anyway.  Ideally we’d get a picture with a little yellow dandelion stuck behind her ear, with her standing in a cute little pose. Perhaps I could use it as my Facebook icon for a while…

She wasn’t feeling cooperative.

Princess Sophie’s help didn’t exactly help.

We tried adding in a toy truck so it would be more fun.

She didn’t find it fun.  On the plus side, we got a flower behind her ear.

Soon thereafter she assaulted the truck.

OK, no truck, just heap the flowers, and put her near them?  Still not a happy camper.

How can a hedgie be so grumpy about flowers?

Somehow shoving flowers in her face was considered an affront.

She definitely did not like this.

She worked on an escape plan.

Her escape plans got more elaborate.

Then she taunted us by posing with a flower under her face.  She stood half off the green cloth to ensure my inner picky photo critic would be extra annoyed.

Posing near a pile, would that do?  With bad lighting that’s way too warm and the whites partly blown out by the exposure?

Finally we got this one.  It’s not the hedgehog with a flower behind its ear that got us started on this quest, but it was late, and it was close enough.  Fine.

Photos of hedgehogs with flowers behind their ears are really kind of overrated.