Pied Hedgehogs and the wisdom teeth are out

In the comment section of my post Children as Mice, and rescuing the Lost, WanderingGondola brought up Sonic the Hedgehog, and how he has been on her mind recently.  She shared the interesting finding that Sonic was originally called Mr. Needlemouse  I found both the reference to a needle and a mouse very interesting, and I was also intrigued by her persistent thought of a hedgehog in the first place.  I mentioned in my reply to her that hedgehogs had also crossed my mind this week due to an art assignment my son brought home from school.  

I am going to share his hedgehog, and then I will also share two other drawings he made literally just this morning.

Fredy the Hedgehog

First of all, luckily there was a brief writing assignment that went with the Hedgehog, because based on the creation alone, I am not sure that I would have identified this creature as a hedgehog. 

Meet Fredy:

I am willing to bet our man did not spend a whole lot of time on this particular project.  This was pretty much confirmed when I asked him a couple questions about it this morning following my response to WG, and he just looked at me and said "Dad, I was just trying to get it done, and didn't want to think about it all that much".  Can't say I blame him.  If someone wanted me to make a hedgehog covered with hearts, I would have probably given it the same effort level.

I was actually worried I had already thrown this away but fortunately I found Fredy today in a stack of papers on the kitchen counter that we hadn't yet cleared out.   As you might be able to see (not sure how clearly the writing comes through), it was done on Feb. 15, the day after Valentine's Day, and I am guessing it was a Valentine's project given the hearts plastered on the hedgehog's body.  It just appeared on the counter this week, though, so either he just brought it home, or he had it in his school bag and finally cleaned it out.  Either way, Fredy made his appearance just this week.

You can never tell exactly what the finished product was supposed to look like with these things, but as I gaze upon Fredy, it seems that perhaps there was a misunderstanding on my son's part as to the exact application of said hearts, but who knows.

As I mentioned in my earlier comment, when I took one look at Fredy I thought "Now that is a pied hedgehog!" with pied in this sense meaning "variegated with spots of different colors".   So, that was an initial connection to the Pied Piper, I guess, though I didn't really think too much more on it at the time - there wasn't really anything else that connected him with the Piper.  It took WG's comment about a hedgehog being called a "needlemouse" in Japanese to bring the rodent aspect in, and thus a somewhat stronger tie-in.

A few things to note, that I already kind of touched on in my comment, but just logging here quickly.

My son mentions that Fredy is going to teach him math.  I was already thinking of him as the Pied Hedgehog, and had written the previous week about Pi in the mathematical sense relating to the solar eclipse occurring over the Kirtland Temple on April 8 at 3:14pm, as well as to the name Pied (Pi-ed).

In his haste to get done with this project, my son misread the second part of the question.  He was asked what kind of day the class would have if the hedgehog was going to be the teacher.  He understood the question to be what specific day would the hedgehog teach him math.  He chose April 7, since that is his birthday, and while not on April 8, it is one day before and fairly close for our purposes (while also coinciding with the final day of both WrestleMania and the LDS General Conference).

Lastly, the name - of course I am going to look into that one.  Fred means "peace".  Recall that in my post "Take u body, find peace", I connected Peace with Tirion, and that this was a place that would be found, and as mentioned in other posts as well, that this would be through a journey involving keys, stones, and doors or gates.

Pi also came to symbolize a gate or door, specifically to Heaven or Tirion itself, as well as a communication link to that place (see Pay Lay Ale), and so I just thought it was interesting that we had a pied hedgehog named peace, who was going to teach my son about math (Pi) the day before the solar eclipse passes over the Kirtland Temple at the time of Pi.

Snakes and Skulls and Crossbones

Today got a bit more interesting with artwork as well.  My son likes a YouTube art class called "Art for Kids Hub".  In these videos, the artist instructs kids how to draw certain things.  The videos are actually very well done, in my opinion, and the drawings are put together in a way that the kids feel they have made something pretty nice (my son actually tries on these).  I've sat down and done some of these drawings with them in the past, and they've been fun.

Anyway, this morning my son wanted to do some drawings.  This is before I had asked him about his hedgehog art, so I didn't jog any artist inclinations this morning from that.  He was limited on screen time today, so my guess is part of his interest in drawing was so that he could watch the art class on the iPad.  He is a sneaky guy like that.

Not sure what the inspiration for his choice was, but this is what he drew:

It's a cobra.  When he showed it to me, the thought popped into my head "The wisdom teeth are out".

That line comes from Vampire Weekend's song "Step", and which William Tychonievich creatively linked to snakes.  Snakes are known as symbols of wisdom, and so a snake baring its teeth might correctly be described as wisdom teeth coming out.  I liked his idea, and it is what I thought of when I saw this particular snake.

Step is a song that I also attributed to Saruman (the "modest mouse"), and by extension Ungoliant.

A little later in the day, he followed up his menacing cobra with this picture:

Skulls and crossbones have popped over on William's blog, for example in his post "Human Skull on the ground, turn around".  This post was one that I also linked to our Evil Duo, after investigating Bonnie Tyler's song "Total Eclipse of the Heart" and noting that it was originally written about Vampires (and then further noting some connections with Shelob).

Artwise it was kind of a macabre day for the little guy  - snakes, skulls, and crossbones.