Handmade Paper Hedgehogs Spark Concern Among Parents
Handcrafted paper hedgehogs, distributed to raise funds for charity, have prompted complaints to the police after some parents discovered the creations contained pages from an explicit novel.
Initially, the small paper hedgehogs appeared to be a kind gesture. An elderly man had made these little figures from donated books to support a local charity, handing them out to children in nearby shops.
However, upon closer examination, several parents were shocked to find that the hedgehogs were constructed from pages of an erotic novel.
“It was ‘adult content. Pure sexual stuff,’”said Linda Fortune, whose four-year-old granddaughter received one of the hedgehogs.
After sharing her unsettling experience on social media, Fortune reported that at least seven other families reached out to her, confirming they had also brought home hedgehogs made from explicit pages.
Incident at Tesco in Merseyside
Jemma Ashby was shopping at a Tesco store in Merseyside with her 10-year-old daughter when a man approached them, offering one of his handmade hedgehogs, which featured googly eyes and a furry nose.
The man carried a bag full of these paper hedgehogs and explained that he made them at home as a hobby.
Ashby described the gesture as “lovely” and placed the hedgehog on her daughter’s windowsill.
Later, after encountering a Facebook post revealing the source material, she was “disgusted.”
“I ran upstairs and grabbed [the hedgehog]. I grabbed a middle page and it said something about being a legal age, and then another page saying about someone’s sister being murdered. I took it out of her room straight away and hid it,”Ashby told the newspaper.
Police Involvement and Response
Some parents were sufficiently concerned to report the matter to the police.
Officers interviewed the man responsible, who stated that he usually checked the pages before using them and was mortified by the oversight.
Merseyside Police issued a statement on Monday, confirming that the force was “happy there was no malice involved and no offences have been committed.”
“The hedgehogs were created in good faith by the individual and have been used to raise money for a local charity,”a spokesperson added.
Source Material and Public Reaction
Some of the hedgehogs appear to have been made from Nicholson Baker’s 1994 erotic novel The Fermata, with at least one containing sexually explicit passages.
Several recipients defended the man who made the hedgehogs, noting that only some contained explicit content and that it was an unintentional mistake.
One woman shared that her four-year-old was “absolutely obsessed” with her paper hedgehog, which was made using pages from Rosemary Enright’s The Walled Garden. She commented,
“Oversight? Yes. I don’t believe [there was] any malicious intent.”
Others expressed enthusiasm about obtaining a hedgehog. One man commented on the Wirral Globe story, saying,
“Who’s the old guy making them? I want one. It would be especially fun if it was made from an erotic novel. If anyone knows him, tell him I’ll pay postage.”
