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The Perils of Pet Prejudice Part 3 – The Princess Strikes Back!
Now begins part 3 of our travelogue, heading on the final stretch, over the river and through the woods to Grandmothers’s house. It was a long drive, so Fancy made good use of the time rehearsing for his role in Annoying Private Ryan:
Still nailing it!
Alabama has a welcome center too, we are sensing a pattern. The first thing we find is a phone booth, a strange relic from the lost past of telephony. Maybe it is a time machine! Princess attempted to communicate with it, but found it strangly unresponsive. Fancy tried to help, but also found it unresponsive. Princess wanted to change into a superhero costume in the phone booth, but we didn’t bring any superhero costumes with us, so Princess and Fancy just played in the booth for a while instead.
Next to the booth was a large concrete monolith with an inspirational saying on it. Fancy thought it must have been placed there by a fellow pet’s rights activist – the persecution of pet’s rights and the sinister signage of institutionalized pet prejudice is an injustice Fancy hopes to overcome some day. He has a dream. Fancy is sure that concrete block is meant to inspire pets everywhere to fight the peculiar and perversely pernicious idea of defending the idea that it’s a “right” to keep pets from visiting visitor centers. Fight the power, hedgehogs, you have nothing to lose but your leashes!
Princess bristled at Marxist undertones of Fancy’s proclamations. As a member of the aristocracy she feels torn. Fancy thought it best to change the topic, since it was a bit of a prickly subject.
“Cousin Phil?”
There were some lovely holly bushes, so we posed Princess in front of them and got this super lucky photo of Princess waving! Whoah!
Once again we met our old nemesis. Rather than explaining with complicated words and sentences why this is bad, we didn’t.
Princess and Fancy were both appalled.
Fancy can be quite the activist…
Is this what happens when a puppet has nothing left to lose? Pushed to the edge, will Fancy, once a mild-mannered and law abiding puppet, become a rule-breaker?
Clearly.
Fancy even turned to handing out brochures he wasn’t authorized to dispense!
And engaged in doing whatever it is that’s happening here.
The breakdown into anarchy continued. Princess turned from her mild mannered rigid authoritarianism to anarchy to the point that *she went past the NO PETS ALLOWED sign*! At this point things were careening off. Princess even tried to climb into that little buttoned down spot on my collar that there was no way she’d ever fit into.
But with family intervention and care she settled down a bit – note she still was rebelliously sticking out her tongue here.
With more time cooler heads prevailed, and we persuaded Fancy and Princess of the value of the social contract, and that we had a Grandma to get to.
On the way out, we decided that there must be a politically connected brother with a sign making business, because seriously.
And later that day we got to Grandma’s
And Great Grandma Gracie even got to see Princess Pricklepants:
THE END
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The Perils of Pet Prejudice Part 2
We made our way on the long drive from Louisiana to Mississippi, a state with constant and consistent consonant complications.
Princess liked it since it had two Ps in the name. Fancy had many opinions about Mississippi but nobody was interested in hearing them. So he rehearsed for “Annoying Private Ryan”:
Nailed it.
For various reasons Mississippi claims to be “The Birthplace of America’s Music,” which seems like a very grand claim. We could have been pedantic quibblers, but hedgehogs don’t really promote pedantic quibbling so we tried to work with it:
:
Once again we encountered the sinister signage of institutionalized pet prejudice.
While we were taking photos of our hedgehog out front, various people noticed our hedgie, and we were showing her to them. One of the workers at the visitor’s center noticed Princess and liked her, and wanted us to bring her in, though when he tried to get us in, security actually stopped us. The Man Holding the Hedgehog Down. (Technically security was actually a lady, and she didn’t hold the hedgehog). Here was the worker who liked Princess holding her:
We sort of took our a stand for pet civil liberties, in a way, by taking pictures of our hedgehog near the sinister signage of institutionalized pet prejudice.
Others kind of joined us, in a sense, by also taking pictures of our hedgehog near the sinister… the “No Pets” sign.
Given the circumstances, we left Princess safely in the car and went inside the Mississippi Welcome Center with Fancy to take a stand. Inside there was this painting of an American ship exploding, as if Mississippi wanted to say, “welcome, ships explode here sometimes, but not often.”
Since the Visitor’s Center was under Pet Segregation, only Fancy was able to pose before the state seal, though he tried to appear hedgehog-like in solidarity. Next time we plan to bring toothpicks to really show them.
Fancy also met Miss. Mississippi, who he enjoyed meeting. Luckily she wasn’t Mrs. Mississippi since that would have been far too difficult to say, and also Fancy might have been challenged to a duel.
After talking to the nice people and forgetting to mention that they really shouldn’t be prejudiced against pets, we headed back to the car. Princess was sleeping in her huffledome, so we let her be without further photographic documentation.
Next – The Perils of Pet Prejudice Part 3 – Alabama’s Revenge (and Land of Too Many Signs).
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The Perils of Pet Prejudice Part 1
On the day after Christmas we packed up a minivan and headed out on the road for a trip to go visit family in Alabama. This was the first time we’ve traveled with Princess Pricklepants, so this was a learning opportunity for us. So far we’ve learned that traveling with hedgehogs isn’t as bad as it might sound. The kids have also learned that traveling with their parents is as bad as it sounds.
For this trip we took along another traveling companion, Fancy, who you probably remember from a previous post. Fancy is our giraffe friend who was a costar in the theatrical release of the drama, “The Princess, the Dragon, and the Giraffe.” Fancy has starred in many long car drive based dramas, including the early hit, “Ow!” as well as many other serial dramas like “Don’t Make Me Pull This Car Over,” “Does Anybody Need To Go To The Bathroom,” and the incredibly long running “No, We Just Got Food.”
After a long day’s drive, we pulled in for dinner at Cracker Barrel in Beaumont, Texas. Fancy generously covered our dinner at Cracker Barrel.
The Cracker Barrel cashier was quite surprised to be able to meet Fancy, we guessed that he had never met a giraffe actor of Fancy’s fame before.
Once we got checked in at the hotel Fancy called his agent.
No new jobs, but a he did send over a script to look at called, “Annoying Private Ryan.” Here’s a shot from one of the many, many rehearsals:
The next day we made it to Louisiana. The visitor’s center had a lot of construction work happening which created some tension between Princess and Fancy in the parking lot.
Then we made a startling discovery. The Louisiana Visitor’s Center was prejudiced against pets!
Facing grave injustice, Princess and Fancy made up and joined together in solidarity.
Together they laughed at danger:
Unfortunately, Fancy had broken the law. Princess was a strong law and order hedgehog, who felt she had no choice but to arrest him.
Princess had stark plans for the scofflaw Fancy.
Fortunately a very friendly and cooperative local construction worker stepped in and began the long needed process of bringing peace and healing between hedgehog and giraffe.
(Side note, has anyone noticed that Christmas keeps coming earlier and earlier each year? It’s not even January, and they already have these things up.)
Coming after this, The Perils of Pet Prejudice Part 2.
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Traveling For a Bit
We’ve been on the road and will be busy with a family trip for a little while, so we’ll be going easy on posting for a bit. We’ve been documenting the trip, so you can look forward to a nice trip report on our return.
To tide you over, here is the pungent smelling human attempting some form of ape-like bonding ritual with Princess who is sticking out her tongue:
And here is Princess Pricklepants waving to all her fans:
Look forward to sharing many great photos of the trip on our return, and perhaps a few fun stories.
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Hedgie Christmas Presents
Princess got a new toy dump truck, a stuffed hedgie friend, a lovely Christmas outfit (to be modeled soon), a new hat and scarf. Her favorite toys – wrapping paper, bows, and a toilet paper tube. Next year we can just wrap a tiolet paper tube and give it to her.
Munching on ribbon:
Tubing
And playing in wrapping paper.
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Teacup Photo Fail
First off, OMG! We made Cute Cute Overload! Yay!
For an additional First off, Merry Christmas!
Secondly, there is a Christmas Photo contest we are in, so if you wanted to look at it and vote for whatever photo you wanted that’d be awesome. Don’t feel any pressure to vote for us, even if you’d feel terrible, lingering, pressing guilt about not voting for us, since our photo (#53) is really kind of good. We like it anyway. You can vote for as many entries as you want, but only vote once.
http://www.carolinastormhedgehogs.com/christmas-contest-2013.html
And finally, Princess has grown a lot since we first took that teacup profile pic (yeah, it’s a coffee mug, but she prefers “teacup” – she’s a dainty princess, after all). She was a teeny little baby girl at that point. Now she’s more like a teenage princess. In most senses.
So we though, “Hey, let’s take some pictures of her in the teacup (coffee mug) now, to give a little sense of how she’s grown larger and cuter, and more adorable, and sweeter, and oh, my little princess, I need to pick you up and hold you close, we’ll do photos later.” Later we did photos. This went poorly.
Wrong end.
Put her back in the cup, grabbed camera, she bolted for the wrong area. Though that corner did smell interesting. I understand that she had to check it out.
Back in the cup, grab camera, watch full bore escape attempt. Clearly she was not interested in the cup. At all.
Haley will help.
Sort of.
Sophie steps in.
More work remains.
Kind of cute, but the angle is all off. (Light isn’t great, either.)
Ta da!
That was the best we could manage out of 63 attempts, so I’ve decided to like it. There are a lot of photography nitpicky things that might be said about the photo by nitpicky photographers, but this is a hedgehog blog, not National Geographic, so it’ll do.
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It’s the Most Pun-derful Time of the Year
OMG, OMG, OMG! You guys, we made Cute Overload! How cool is that?
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Happy Festivus!
We found our Festivus pole (a Festivus miracle), and Princess P. conquered all in the Feats of Stength.
We fear the Airing of Grievances.
Princess: You do not let me poop in your hand nearly enough.
Us: Um, sorry, I think.
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Slurp!
Princess having a drink:
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Bath Time
She doesn’t really mind bath time, but likes to take breaks. We just use home-made colloidal oatmeal and water to bathe her. This has been working so far. You shouldn’t bathe hedgehogs too often since it’s not really good for their skin, but after she’s been running on the wheel for enough days tracking poop, she can get a little stinky
You can see the reverse-mohawk pretty well in these. The reverse mohawk is a bald stripe along the top of the head that allows them to cross their quills when they ball up.
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Happy Holidays!
Well she was being really docile last night so we went and took a few more holiday photos. She even put up with the hat.
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Sleeping Beauty
Princess P. is still fairly young (though maturing quickly), so she sleeps a lot. She sleeps in her igloo, she sleeps in her cuddle sacks, she crawls under shirts and tries to sleep there (this isn’t usually popular with the shirt wearers), and if she’s sitting on you she’ll crawl under your hand, curl up, and sleep there.
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Huffy In the Pringles Tube
Princess is usually in a pretty good mood, but when she wakes up she has her transition period where instead of being prickly-bear-the-cute, she’s prickly-angry-bear and it’s scary. An easy way to tell is if you can’t see her eyes. This means she’s pulled the quills down over them and is aiming them at you. Also if the ears are pushed down from the quills pushing them down. If he hisses and huffs, that’s also a good indicator.
Annoyed to the left.
Annoyed to the center.
Annoyed to the right.
All angles of irritation are covered here for your convenience. Poor sweet little princess, she really wasn’t feeling well. Her skin is a little dry, we are thinking that’s the issue and are working on making her more comfortable.
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A Handful of Hedgehog
Princess Pricklepants has been growing steadily, her last weigh-in put her at 10.4 oz/295 g. While she no longer is as small as she was even a week ago, she’s still not very big. She’s easy to carry in one hand. She sometimes will fall asleep in your hand if you are boring enough to her, and she falls asleep sitting on my leg or stomach with my hand over her head a lot. She’ll walk up to my hand, push her nose under my hand to get underneath, then curl up into a ball with her head pressed against my palm and fall asleep.
We think she’s just about done growing at this point (though only time will tell). She’s around the average weight for an adult hedgehog, though there is some variety in sizes.
Here she is being held by Sophie.
Looking around.
Getting sleepier.
She’s out.
Napping comfortably in Sophie’s hand.
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Happy Holidays!
We finally have a few decent holiday photos from the latest attempt. Yay!
Hark, the Herald Hedgehogs Sing
The multi-talented Princess P. P. never fails to amaze.
Calmly and patiently modeling the hat that was surprisingly hard to sew.
Christmas means carnage!
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And The Hedgehog Pushes Us Over Half a Million Views
We use Flickr to post photos, been using it for a good while to post family photos and nature photography. Our photo stream is here:
On Flickr there’s a thing called being Explored – out of the millions of photos a day that are uploaded, 500 are selected as the most “interesting” (not good exactly, interesting), based on peoples responses to them. Here are the photos we’ve had explored:
We were hanging out in the 490,000 area when we started posting hedgie photos. Two of them got explored and got around 20,000 views each, and brought a bunch more views to the whole photo stream that pushed us over the 500,000 mark.
The Hedgehog pushes it to half a million. Half a million views on flickr and $5 will get you a cup of coffee at Starbucks.
On an unrelated note, this is the first photo we got explored:
Santa Squirrel:
And this is our most viewed ever (66,000 views), which made it to #1 in Explore.
Mouse Raiding the Bird Feeder:
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Hedgie Hug
Well, Sophie calls this a hug…
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Profound
Zoom!
It took a while, but Princess P. P. has fully gotten the hang of her wheel. She loves to run in it now, which is very good. Hedgies really need their exercise – if they don’t get enough exercise they can become overweight and be at high risk for a lot of very nasty health problems.
The Pleasantries of Princess Pricklepants 