"Mother," said Painted Jaguar,

"there are two new animals in the woods to-day, and the one that you said couldn't swim, swims, and the one that you said couldn't curl up, curls; and they've gone shares in their prickles, I think, because both of them are scaly all over, instead of one being smooth and the other very prickly; and, besides that, they are rolling round and round in circles, and I don't feel comfy."

"Son, son!" said Mother Jaguar ever so many times, graciously waving her tail, "a Hedgehog is a Hedgehog, and can't be anything but a Hedgehog; and a Tortoise is a Tortoise, and can never be anything else."

"But it isn't a Hedgehog, and it isn't a Tortoise. It's a little bit of both, and I don't know its proper name."

"Nonsense!" said Mother Jaguar. "Everything has its proper name. I should call it “Ananias” because it is a liar." And she impaled it on a sharpened spike, as a warning to all the other animals on the banks of the turbid Amazon that they should not attempt to masquerade as salted pineapples.

The little object to the left of the spike, under one of its leaves, may look like a house but it is obviously much too small. It is in fact the rare Amazonian Rectilinear Truffle, expensive but a crucial ingredient when cooking a whole tapir, available in any good delicatessen. If the shopkeeper says FECK or BOLLOCKS then you have entered an indelicatessen by mistake.