What a gift!

Here I am, sitting studiously at work, when I recieve a beautifully wrapped package that for once isn't 4 ton glass samples. Hooray! What can it be? A wonderful book ALL ABOUT HEDGEHOGS, titled The Hedgehog's Dilemma. It is of course from my dear friend Katie B. -- what else would someone like her give as a xmas present? I've only thumbed through it but judging on the looks of the first chapter page and the author's picture this is going to be one amazing read. The first paragraph is enough to make your pants hot with envy:

Is this a ridiculous question? After all, surely everyone knows what a hedgehog is -- there is no mistaking the small, brown, spiny mammal for anything else, unless, maybe you are drunk and get it confused with a porcupine. Which is not a relative, by the way, not at all. Porcupines are rodents, like rats and squirrels; hedgehogs are insectivores, related to moles and shrews.

I'm not sure I know where the obsession will such small adorable balls of cuteness began, but it very well might have started here, where I spotted Pascal: