This is what happens when one blindly follows rule of thirds
The boat fenders ruin the picture.
Saving Sonic
When most people think of hedgehogs -- most people I know, anyway -- they think of this guy.
Hes blue. Hes fast. He picks up golden rings while spinning across impossible terrain. Hes basically unstoppable. Hed never fall for something like this:
Those are McFlurrys. Ostensibly, McFlurries are food. Theyre a blended soft-serve ice cream dessert which usually has cookies, cake, candy, etc. mixed in. McDonalds introduced it to its menu after a successful test in Hawaii in 1997, and, as an aside, the process to make them is really neat. Wikipedia notes that in most places -- not New Zealand or Australia (where theyre mixed by hand) -- the blender uses a specially designed spoon with a hollow handle that attached to the mixer spindle which is used once then given to the customer to use to eat the product.
But some customers dont use spoons. They just stick their heads in and lick the McFlurry cup. These customers dont pay either. Theyre the aforementioned hedgehogs.
The problem is the cup pictured above. Hedgehogs -- real hedgehogs (which look like this) -- would crawl in, eat themselves a tasty treat, and then try to go onto their next meal (or take a nap or whatever hedgehogs do). Unfortunately, the cups weren't designed as hedgehog feeders, and the small nocturnal mammals would find themselves unable to get free of the cup, like the one seen here. Their heads trapped, theyd be unable to find any more food and starve to death -- or, perhaps theyd get a reprieve from that fate if they walked off into traffic, blinded by the cup, and met a more gory but quicker death. But in general, eating a McFlurry led to a death sentence for the poor hedgehog.
That's a bad thing, and it wasn't not acceptable to the British Hedgehog Preservation Society, a group which at the time claimed 12,000 members (people, not hedgehogs) and has a very narrow but, in this case, relevant mission. In 2001, according to the Independent, a postal worker discovered a dead hedgehog trapped in a McFlurry cup and notified the Society about the dangers posed by the McDonalds product. The Independent further reported that dozens if not hundreds of other concerned callers reported similar findings.
The organization was upset -- understandably, given their cause -- that these products were killing the cute little animals. They started a letter writing campaign, asking (politely, apparently) that the fast food giant redesign the cups. Five or so years later, and likely at a considerable expense, McDonalds did exactly that.
For some reason, though, the change didn't go into place everywhere. Even after UK Mickey Ds had hedgehog-safe McFlurry containers, Germany did not, much to the chagrin of a BUND, a large environmental group. While BUND doesnt focus exclusively on hedgehogs, their complaints about the McFlurry cups were solely in support of the tiny animals. And for two years, they, like their UK brethren before them, pressured McDonalds to change. In 2008, BUND won -- the golden arches in Germany switched to the new containers.
Nice capture . Do you mean Twin Lights State Park?
Time did not allow for the Museum visit ,on my list for next summer
Photos of my trip along Me coast
Owls Head Me
Nubble point ,York Me
Portland Headlight Me