Hedgehog in the Fog

Today I met a little hedgehog at work named Lola! I couldn't help but harken back to the time when my best friend and I saw Hedgehog in the Fog for the first time. It was viewed in our Russian language course a few years ago, and has since been an odd favorite to share with friends and family. If you click on the left image it will take you to a link where you can view this really interesting Russian animated film. I don't know too many details about the original incentive for the film, but it was created in the Soviet era in the 1970s. There's a hedgehog who has a tradition of meeting up with his good friend, a bear to look up at the stars as they always do. It's a comforting and regular routine that the bear always counts on, and while he waits for the hedgehog, his prickly friend gets lost in the fog on the way. While the hedgehog safeguards his jar of jam he wants to bring to share with his friend, the fog yields a spooky adventure, and he gets a bit side-tracked. In 2009, a monument to Hedgehog in the Fog was dedicated and erected in the center of Kiev, Ukraine, as you can see in the right image. I thought this was pretty neat, and am wondering how popular this film is still today, and what source of influence it had in the Soviet era. As it happens, I've often come across hedgehogs in my search for East European culture, and of course there is an East European hedgehog species, in addition to others found in Africa and Asia. Lola, by the way is an African hedgehog, so she is extra prickly! Take a look at Hedgehog Central for more information on the different hedgehog species, mind you that this website does need to update its sociopolitical terminology- Czechoslovakia is no longer a country (it's the Czech Republic and Slovakia)!!!