The Most Popular Hedgehog in Town
Meet Penelope the Hedgehog. After a 2 year addiction, and complete fascination, of hedgehogs I finally adopted my own in November of 2015. My love for hedgehogs is so extreme that I usually get tagged thee times in every hedgehog video out there. When I got Penelope I could barley believe she was real. She was smaller than my hand, and had big adorable round ears.
Inspired by Biddy the Hedgehog, who I followed for two years until he passed away, I decided to create an Instagram account for Penelope. At first it was just my friends and fellow hedgehog fanatics who followed her, but she quickly gained steam as fellow Portlanders discovered her, and accepted her as part of the city's own quirk.
Penelope's adventures into Portland were a crowed favorite. The Picture on the left being Penelope's most liked Instagram picture (495 likes). Penelope grew from getting shares by pet accounts such as Pet_Obsession (57.2K followers) to Portland, and PNW accounts like Portland (205K followers), and pnwonderland (342K followers), where they called her things from "legendary" to "Portland's resident hedgehog." This helped to launch Penelope from 1,000 followers on February 8, 2016 to 2,900 followers on April 7, 2016.
April 7 was also a particularly notable day for Penelope as she was featured as the #2 Instagram pet in Oregon, by The Oregonian. This was a great accomplishment for Penelope (and I) as the rankings were based on content and creativity.
The above video features the top three Instagram pets.
Looking forward I am excited to continue Penelope's Instagram journey which will include hiking in the summer, and possibly a beach trip! All the love we receive from her followers is really a lot of what keeps me going. Here are a few of my favorite comments: "Follow this account and you will never be sad"(sally.evans), "This account makes me so happy."(ryenotbread), "WHY IS IT SO FUNNY AND CUTE AND PERFECT"(kristinsmithy). I would love to have 10k followers by the end of 2016 to continue spreading the joy and adorableness of Penelope.