The Hedgehog Who Collected Sounds

A quiet bedtime story about listening to the small sounds around us.

Hattie the hedgehog had a very special jar. It was not for jam, or beetles, or buttons. It was for sounds. Every evening, she tiptoed out of her nest and held the jar up to the dark.

First, she heard a cricket going chirp, chirp, chirp. She popped the sound into her jar. It went tick, tick, tick against the glass.

Next, she heard the wind in the long grass. Shhh, went the grass, shhh, shhh. Into the jar it went, soft as a sigh.

Then she heard a frog by the pond. Ribbit, ribbit, went the frog, deep and round. Hattie smiled and tucked that sound into the jar, too.

A little further on, she heard a tiny splash. It was a drop of dew falling from a leaf into the pond. Plip. It was the smallest sound in the world, and Hattie loved it best.

She walked home with her jar held close. At the door of her nest, she opened the lid. Out came the cricket, the grass, the frog and the plip, all swirling together like a song.

Hattie curled up in her bed of leaves. The sounds of the evening wrapped around her like a blanket, chirp and shhh and ribbit and plip.

Her eyes grew heavy. Her breath grew slow. The very last thing she heard was a plip, so soft that it was almost a dream. Then Hattie was asleep.

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