It was the sixth day of creation.

 

It must have been late in the day, toward dusk, when God made his most unique creatures. His creative juices were flowing. Elephants, armadillos, platypus, manatees. The unique nocturnal creatures must have been the very last.

 

Perhaps a rat or a mouse ran by, followed by a porcupine.

 

“Ah-ha,” God must have said to Himself. “The last creature I make on earth before the human shall be like a combination of a unicorn and a mouse … except I didn’t quite get to the unicorn. A multi-corn mouse shall do.” And poof it was.

 

The hard-to-place creature was named after other familiar living things when it was presented to Adam for official naming. The multi-corn mouse poked out only its snout from a hedge when Adam saw it.

 

It was Eve who later fully discovered the hedgehog after Adam had gone to bed. It curled up in her lap while she was star gazing near a strawberry patch. “Well, hello there, little hedgehog … oh, my what bristly fur you have,” she noted. Eve enjoyed petting the textured, curled up creature as the moon rose.

 

The hedgehog suddenly scuttled back into the strawberry patch when it heard a twig crack. In Eve’s hand was left a quill, a small spine banded in brown and white.

 

She dipped it in a bit of strawberry juice and became the first human to write.

 

C-U-T-E, she etched on a leaf.

 

Sara Marie Moore is a journalist and happy hedgehog owner. She had her first hedgehog in fourth grade long before the current hedgehog craze.