On the kind of sick relationship from which our children must be preserved

Okay, so we all know that children are the future. And we know how important it is that children be raised in a stable household with a mother and father, or a mother and an absent father, or a father and no mother, or an abusive pair of parents, or an alcoholic mother and a codependant father, or vice vera, or vice any of them versa, as long as kids aren't being raised by two stable, responsible women (or men) who love them very much (clutch pearls!).

I don't even know what to make of this:

Four tiny orpahned hedgehogs are snuggling up to the bristles of a cleaning brush - because they think it's their mother.

The four inch long creatures are being hand-reared by staff at the New Forest Otter, Owl and Wildlife Park in Ashurst, Hants.

Workers say Mary, Mungo, Midge and Slappy get comfort from playing with the centre's cleaning brush and enjoy rubbing against it.

The smells on the brush, which is used to sweep a yard, remind the hedgehogs of their natural habitat while the texture reminds them of their mother.

On the one hand, this unnatural relationship that these hedgehog bébés have with that cleaning brush is just twisted. They're doomed to growup without appreciation for the traditional gender roles of girl hedgehogs and boy hedgehogs; why, they're likely to think that the job of a hedgehog mom is to just lie there, unmoving, all day long, while the kids crawl all over her and the father works long hours to keep the whole family in grubs.

On the other hand, they could be raised by two female hedgehogs, and God knows what that would do to them.

(Hat tip Cute Overload)