Animal Fables II: Hedgehog

Once upon a time, there lived a hedge­hog called Cedric.

Cedric was the world’s friend­li­est hedge­hog. Whereas most of his prickly pals would impuls­ively shy away from con­tact with any­one but other hedge­hogs, Cedric would run towards com­plete strangers with open arms (well, he would have had open arms if such a pose was pos­sible for a hedge­hog), his little nose twitch­ing with pleas­ure at the thought of mak­ing a new acquaintance.

Cedric loved human beings in par­tic­u­lar. They were his favourite.

Our lov­able hedge­hog was not at all shy. He was pos­it­ively effus­ive when greet­ing people. He was a ‘touchy-feely’ kind of hedge­hog. Which made it all the more dif­fi­cult for him to under­stand why folks would shriek and cry out as he rolled him­self around the palms of their hands when say­ing hello. He was only try­ing to get to know them, after all. What harm could there be in that?

One day, Cedric finally real­ised the truth. Needles hurt.

Alarmed, he vis­ited the hedge­hog doc­tor and asked for his healthy coat of needles to be removed. The doc­tor nar­rowed his eyes and stared over the rims of his spec­tacles, as he tried to dis­suade his patient from fol­low­ing such a drastic course of action. Cedric, how­ever, was one determ­ined hedge­hog, and he would not budge.

So, after a few months wrapped up in band­ages while he recu­per­ated in Mrs Tiggywinkle’s Hos­pital For Malinger­ing Hedge­hogs, Cedric proudly revealed his new needle­less stuff to the world. Unfor­tu­nately, no one gave him a second glance, no mat­ter how friendly he tried to be.

“A hedge­hog isn’t a hedge­hog if it doesn’t have any needles!” people would say, while attempt­ing to stifle their laughter. “What a silly hedge­hog you are!”

Con­fused, Cedric vis­ited the old­est hedge­hog in the vil­lage, in the hope that he would offer some wise counsel.

The great, grand hedge­hog nod­ded sagely. This wasn’t the first needle­less hedge­hog he’d seen, and it wouldn’t be the last.

“Oh Cedric. Cedric, Cedric, Cedric! It wasn’t the needles that were the prob­lem, it’s just what you did with them. You have to be care­ful with needles. They’re very sharp.”

And with those words echo­ing around his small hedge­hog head, Cedric depar­ted, wear­ing a pin cush­ion on his back. It wasn’t the same but it would just have to do.

The End.

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