The Elegance of the Hedgehog

Photo by JS,

This posting takes us back to France, a wonderful area to travel and live, sampling the grapes, the food, enjoying the colors and textures of the countryside, marveling at the natural beauty and yes, finding this taxidermic hedgehog among the treasures at a local art museum. Really, this posting is  about hedgehogs and related matters. (It's sad, I agree, that my first experience of a hedgehog was of a stuffed one, as one reader commented.)

Why did I stop to take this photo? Because of its natural appeal: that posture,  that rotund little body that can roll itself into a ball, that peculiar little face; it's also called 'urchin'. And it's an oddity for me because hedgehogs are not  native to North America and I've never seen one, so I was curious about it. Years ago,  I remember reading that many of them were being killed by cars in Europe. They also tend to get their heads stuck in pipes, tubes and various containers. I felt some sympathy.

Another reason is that I was reading The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery, a French novelist and former professor of philosophy. It's an interesting mix of eccentric characters that I enjoyed even when irritated by them. The story and its bits of philosophy and social-class dissection are narrated alternately by a middle-aged concierge and a precocious 12-year-old girl of the upper-bourgeosie. Both of them are ruthlessly intellectual, judgmental, and often obnoxious while also, to my mind, often being right-on in their discernment and more than a little hilarious. It's quite a coup of a book, and it has more heart than appears likely from my description.

[Related Links: A link I like for animal-related matters animals.nationalgeographic.com/animals/mammals/hedgehog and for kids:  kids.nationalgeographic.com/kids/animals/.../hedgehog/. There seem to clubs out there devoted to domesticated hedgehogs also:  http://exoticpets.about.com/b/2009/11/17/hedgehogs-as-pets.htm
As for The Elegance of the Hedgehog, you can check your usual book sources for borrowing or purchasing, and here's a fuller review: www.goodreads.com/book/.../2967752-the-elegance-of-the-hedgehog]