Hooray

Story reference: The Hare and the Hedgehog — Brothers Grimm.

For “Hooray,” I drew a hedgehog celebrating his victory, with a gold coin and a bottle of brandy at his feet. He looks very pleased with himself. Having read the story, I’m not sure I’d leave him in charge of organising a sporting event.

It begins with a hare making fun of the hedgehog’s short, crooked legs. The hedgehog challenges him to a race, then quietly stations his wife at the opposite end of the field. She looks enough like him to fool the hare, who arrives to find that his supposedly hopeless opponent has already finished.

The hare demands another race back. The husband is waiting there. This continues until the hare collapses and dies on the seventy-fourth run.

The hedgehogs collect their winnings and go home.

I do enjoy seeing an arrogant bastard taken down a peg, but this seems a rather permanent correction.

The hare runs himself to death trying to win a rigged race. Capitalism calls that a work ethic. Keep going, work harder, blame yourself when you can’t keep up. By the time you burn out, someone else has collected the winnings—and you’ve been taught to call it a personal failure.

My hedgehog, meanwhile, is having a lovely day.