Watch a squirrel with an acorn for a moment. It might eat it, carry it up a tree, or bury it somewhere nearby. That last choice can have an unexpected result: a new tree.
Closer to the ground, a hedgehog searches through fallen leaves for its next meal. It is less noticeable than the squirrel, but its everyday habits also connect it to the world around it.
These small details are the starting point for Hedgehog Hollow, our woodland-inspired print. Before turning squirrels and hedgehogs into illustrated characters, it helps to get to know the real animals.
How squirrels help new trees grow
（Photo by Yasin Onuş)
Some squirrels store food in many separate hiding places, a behavior called scatter-hoarding. They bury nuts and seeds, then return for them when food is harder to find.
But not every seed is recovered. Some remain in the soil, where they may germinate if conditions are right. By carrying seeds away from the tree that produced them, squirrels can help trees spread to new places.
The squirrel is storing a meal, not deliberately planting a forest. Even so, its search for food can contribute to the next generation of trees. The U.S. National Park Service explains this connection in its guide to food caching.
That is part of what makes squirrels interesting to observe. A small, ordinary action can leave something growing behind it.
What hedgehogs do among the leaves
(Photo by Nikola Tomašić)
The European hedgehog lives in a mixture of habitats, including woodland edges, hedgerows, and gardens. It usually searches for food at night.
Its diet includes beetles, caterpillars, earthworms, and other invertebrates. Through feeding, hedgehogs take part in the food web close to the ground. Calling them “forest cleaners” would be misleading: the creatures they eat have important roles of their own. Nature is more interconnected than that. You can read more in the Woodland Trust’s guide to what hedgehogs eat.
Their most recognizable feature is, of course, their spines. When threatened, a hedgehog can curl up, protecting its more vulnerable underside. The spines are a defense, rather than something it shoots or throws. The Woodland Trust’s European hedgehog profile explains more about this adaptation.
For our design, that protective shape offered an interesting starting point: how could we keep the hedgehog recognizable while giving it a softer, illustrated character?
From animal behavior to a design idea
We associate the squirrel with curiosity: looking around, investigating, and moving on to the next discovery. With the hedgehog, we see a different idea—the ability to protect yourself when you need to.
These are our interpretations, not scientific descriptions of their personalities. A squirrel searching for food is not thinking about being adventurous, and a hedgehog curling up is responding to danger.
Illustration gives us room to build on those observations.
In Hedgehog Hollow, the squirrel represents the wish to explore. The hedgehog represents having a little space of your own. Bringing them together lets us tell a story about both: going out into the world and feeling comfortable taking a pause.
Turning those ideas into a woodland print
The aim is to keep the details that make each animal familiar—the squirrel’s full tail, the hedgehog’s rounded body and spiny outline—while simplifying them into characters.
Rounded lines and softer colors bring the animals into CloudyCoo’s storybook world. The squirrel’s alertness becomes a sense of curiosity. The hedgehog’s protective shape becomes a symbol of reassurance.
As the individual drawings come together in a repeating pattern, they become familiar little figures that a child and parent can notice together. A tail here, a small nose there: simple details to point out while getting dressed or settling into the evening.
What Hedgehog Hollow means to us
The idea behind the print is simple: there is room to be curious, and there is room to be cautious.
Children approach new things differently. One may reach out straight away; another may prefer to watch first. We wanted these two woodland characters to leave room for both ways of exploring.
A parent might begin with, “Can you find the squirrel?” Later, that could become a conversation about where nuts go, what hedgehogs eat, or why wild animals need their own space.
That is what we hope Hedgehog Hollow can offer: a small introduction to the real animals behind the drawings, with enough imagination left over for a story.
