Hey guys, guess what!? We entered our first hedgehog christmas photo contest and took 4th place! We took 8th in the voting round out of 118 entries (with some very suspicious voting anomalies), and 4th in the judged round – that’s pretty dang good for a first entry.
Thanks to everyone who voted! You are all great!
http://www.carolinastormhedgehogs.com/christmas-contest-2013.html
Here’s the entry:
After a long drive and a civil rights crisis at various visitor centers we made it over the hills and through the woods to Grandmother’s House.
Here’s Princess and Grandma Linda.
And, of course, people held her like they always do.
And she was adorable. And there was more holding.
And she met my sister Suz. who was very fond of our happy fun ball.
Unfortunately Suz had made a grilled cheese sandwich earlier and smelled delicious. Very, very delicious.
So delicious that Princess, against her better manners had to taste her finger just a little. Fortunately we had the camera out so we were able to get a photo.
Suz., Sophie, and Princess P. P. also surfed the web together for a while and spent time reading blog posts about pet hedgehogs and other important things.
While there, for various reasons we went to Hobby Lobby and bought props to take hedgehog photos. And so the following happened.
It all began when Princess Pricklepants was wandering through the woods and found a wishing well. Since she hadn’t seen the new Hobbit movie, she wished that she could visit the Shire.
And so it came to pass that she arrived there.
It smelled fantastic.
And it almost tasted as good as grilled cheese sandwich remnants.
Then, for various reasons involving the plot Princess found a treasure chest!
The End. Or is it? Hmm, that treasure chest might come in handy in certain future pirate adventures…
Impromptu Hedgehog Fairy Tales might need a little more plot development eventually.
If you look carefully in that treasure chest you’ll see a Latvian 1 lat coin with a hedgehog on it that Suz gave us as an awesome present.
Many other things also happened since we went on a few outings with Fancy, but we already have a lot of photos and a lot of text in here so we’re going to stop adding on to it.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Princess having a drink:
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.
Pricklepants is in peril, placed in a pirate prison.
She plots her plan to pursue freedom…
Will she pinpoint a path from prison? Stay tuned for the next installment of Penelope Pricklepants, Pirate Princess.
They have the same expression.
One Upon a Time there was a very prickly princess. Who was attacked by a dragon. There was a giraffe. With a wand.
For reasons involving the plot, she clobbered the giraffe.
Then she clobbered the dragon.
Which the giraffe approved of.
She then climbed the giraffe.
And she lived happily ever after. Sadly, the Dragon and Giraffe did not.
Ta da!
The Pleasantries of Princess Pricklepants 