A Florid Adventure

Posted on January 16, 2014 by princesspricklepants

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.

A Few Recent Photos of Note

Posted on January 13, 2014 by princesspricklepants

We were visiting our friend Victoria recently, and so of course I had to wander away from people and lie on my stomach to take photos of the hedgehog walking around. I have the mad social skillz.

Guess what? Princess butt.

A hand full of hedgehog head on.

Low angle, low key.

When she curls up on you and sleeps it hits quantum adorableness and tears into the space-time fabric. We try to keep her awake.

A Look Inside the Tube

Posted on January 12, 2014 by princesspricklepants

One thing I’ve wondered about is whether hedgehogs keep their eyes open or closed when tubing. Thanks to some photographic investigation, we now know. This seems to explain why they bump around so much when tubing.

A Princess, a Battle Tower, and IKEA Furniture

Posted on January 9, 2014 by princesspricklepants

In the grim future of Princess Pricklepants there is only war.

If ever in the future you were looking for some depiction of the madness of war, we have one for you here.

The IKEA doll furniture set’s scaled really well for Princess. We have been thinking about adding it to her cage since she seems to actually like the couch. The slip cover is washable, and after this shoot it needs a wash. I often hide a small plastic red squirrel in these because I like taking photos of squirrels too. It’s on the IKEA shelf.

Photographer’s note: The flash managed to fill things in pretty well. I took a few shots using various settings with and without flash. It was late at night, so ambient lighting was poor, and I didn’t want to spend time setting up lights since we needed to get to bed. This was a quickie as Max and I had just built the tower (thanks Mom), so I didn’t get a tripod or the new monopod. The shadows on the wall are a bit harsh, though they’re the only place it stands out. We have a second tower in the works. It was a very easy build.

Whether you had any idea that I thought that much about taking pictures of the hedgehog, or were you were more shocked at how quick and dirty I was with the setup? If it was the latter you’re a photographer, and you’ll be thinking about how I could have better composed the photo, and that the colors are kind of muddy, and on and on.

f/5.6 1/30 ISO 800 – I used the kit lens, had to go with a bit more closed aperture to get the DoF to include the tower and hedgie.

Phbbbt!

Posted on January 7, 2014 by princesspricklepants

f/5, 1/60, ISO 2800

Princess Pricklepants at Grandma’s House

Posted on January 2, 2014 by princesspricklepants

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.

The Perils of Pet Prejudice Part 3 – The Princess Strikes Back!

Posted on December 30, 2013 by princesspricklepants

Previously Part 1, Part 2.

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

The Perils of Pet Prejudice Part 2

Posted on December 29, 2013 by princesspricklepants

Previously.

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).

The Perils of Pet Prejudice Part 1

Posted on December 28, 2013 by princesspricklepants

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.

A Handful of Hedgehog

Posted on December 16, 2013 by princesspricklepants

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.