Just So Stories

In “the High and Far-Off Times” (28), the Stickly-Prickly Hedgehog was friends with the Slow-Solid Tortoise. They lived on the banks of the Amazon River along with the Painted Jaguar, who “ate everything that he could catch” (28). When he ran out of things to eat, the Painted Jaguar went to his mother, who told him how to eat hedgehogs and tortoises. His mother patiently explained that one must drop a hedgehog into the water so it would uncurl, and the tortoise should be scooped out of its shell with a paw.

One evening, the Painted Jaguar finds the Stickly-Prickly Hedgehog and the Slow-Solid Tortoise on the bank of the river. They cannot escape the Painted Jaguar, so the Tortoise pulls himself into his shell, and the Hedgehog curls into a ball. The Jaguar repeats his mother’s advice, but he isn’t sure which animal is which, and the Hedgehog and the Tortoise confuse him. They ask if he is sure he remembers correctly; perhaps he should “uncoil a Tortoise” by “shell[ing] him out of the water with a scoop” (29). They refuse to tell him who is the Hedgehog and who is the Tortoise, but the Stickly-Prickly Hedgehog tells the Painted Jaguar that he can scoop him out of his shell.