Our other Kid

I apologize, this child doesn't get the limelight like Juneau does...we didn't want him to feel left out. Quite frankly he'd rather I left him out. He hates social interaction. We bribed him with some food to sit but even then lots of sputtering and hissing ensued from our little friendly woodland critter. Bruno (full name Brunelleschi) is Charley's pet. He's three years old and came from a fainting goat farm in Charlotte. We had a hedgehog before him named Grünewald, who unfortunately died shortly after we got him of birth defects. Any small animal of our household will keep the theme of being named after renaissance artists. 

Having a pet hedgehog is not unlike having a pet rock. They range in temperaments, friendly to bashful to grumpy. Ours is grumpy. He likes one person in the whole world, Charley, and will hiss and curl up for everyone else. He's not a mean little fella. He doesn't bit or lash out, he just would rather be left alone. He was raised on cat food, a science diet blend of chicken and rice, since it has the right amounts of protein that he needs. In the wild, he would have caught bugs with his long tongue. He sleeps during the day, and runs in a little wheel at night and thats that.

No, he's not pink and I can't hit him with a croquet mallet but he is awfully cute. He get's a lot of attention because he is such an odd pet. Repairmen and exterminators that visit the house usually ask what he is and want to see him. He is quite entertaining to watch because he is so cute. He constantly sniffs and snorts  and is on the lookout for good things to eat. When he finds something particularly wonderful, a scent or a taste, he will foam at the mouth and throw this foam onto his back to try to spread the scent onto himself. It's his way of remembering things, the  next time he happens  upon the desirous object he will recall the smell.

For the photographers out there, this is a simple setup using foam board. It's a miniature equivilent for the infinity walls they create for TV commercials and such. Make a box with the foam board (or in my case I used just two sides, one floor and one wall). If you are in a dark room, you will need a light to reflect on the back wall. You will want to overexpose this wall by half a stop to get the white look and not gray. The trick here is WHITE BALANCE white balance WHITE BALANCE. Can I say it some more? Most people forget about this simple feature on the camera that makes a world of a difference. Most times it's harder to fix color balance in photoshop, so do it the right way the first time!! For Bruno's pictures, I changed my white balance to shade because our indoor light was more warm tinted. Don't depend on Auto white balance, it can't translate what you want the end result to be. It's thinking "I'm metering warm light, I'll take whats there". You're thinking "yes I have ugly florescent lighting but I don't want that light to show up!". Okay maybe that was a stretch, camera's don't think.