Black and grey dotwork tattoo of a squirrel curled around a hedgehog, framed by flowers and berries, on a calf.

Curled squirrel and hedgehog with flowers on a calf

Dotwork · Calf · Black and grey · Photo

A squirrel-like animal curls around a hedgehog with its head bowed towards the smaller animal, surrounded by open five-petalled flowers, leaves and berry sprigs. The design uses fine outlines with dense stippling and dotted texture to build up shading on the fur, spines and foliage. It is rendered entirely in black and grey ink and fills an oval composition on the lower leg.

Dotwork Botanical Calf Squirrel Flower Leaves Berry

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Tom,

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The hedgehog came in the coal scuttle on the second night of frost, and I still can't say which of them carried it. Dad swears the squirrel did, the red one that used to rob the bird table before the cat got fat and lazy. We found the pair of them in the morning, the squirrel curled round the hedgehog like a hot-water bottle, its nose tucked under a spiny chin as if it had been there all night keeping watch.

We've put them in the blanket box in the back kitchen, the one with the holes Grandad drilled for air. Mrs Pearce from the chapel says a hedgehog that doesn't wake for three days is best left alone, so we leave them alone, though I go in every morning with oatcakes and a saucer of milk we don't drink ourselves. The squirrel never lifts its head. It just watches me with one eye open, the way you used to watch the stove when you were small.

Yesterday the hedgehog's snout twitched. Only a fraction, but enough that Dad went quiet and then started whistling, which he hasn't done since Gran's funeral. I think the squirrel felt it too, because it shifted its tail over the spines and went back to sleep.

I've pinned your last postcard above the sink, the one with the harbour on it. Write when you can. The frost isn't going anywhere, and neither are we.

Love, Nan