Dear Knowflakes,
I have really enjoyed your responses to the question - yes, it was GAIA's thread that inspired me to ask it - I had asked it eons ago when I taught an college English course, and had also many delightful answers (and one of them was "That's me sleeping under my blanket!).
The drawing comes from Antoine de St. Exupery, who was a French author and pilot who died while on a scouting mission during World War II. The name of the book is Le Petite Prince (The Little Prince). It is a very simple story about a prince who comes to Earth and discovers a lot. I read it first in my first French course in high school (it is that simple!), and as GAIA said so well, that version is the best one, as things do get lost in translation, particularly with this book. And yet, it is a really beautiful and very philosophical book, and I find out things every time I reread it (and I still can read the French!).
The drawing I posted comes from the beginning of the book, and I have quoted it as well as given you the "answer" to what it is. And everyone is right!
Love
Dave
"Once when I was six years old I saw a magnificent picture in a book, called True Stories from Nature, about the primeval forest. It was a picture of a boa constrictor in the act of swallowing an animal. Here is a copy of the drawing.
In the book it said: "Boa constrictors swallow their prey whole, without chewing it. After that they are not able to move, and they sleep through the six months that they need for digestion."
I pondered deeply, then, over the adventures of the jungle. And after some work with a colored pencil I succeeded in making my first drawing. My Drawing Number One. It looked like this:
(This is the drawing at the top of the thread).
I showed my masterpiece to the grown-ups, and asked them whether the drawing frightened them.
But they answered: "Frighten? Why should any one be frightened by a hat?"
My drawing was not a picture of a hat. It was a picture of a boa constrictor digesting an elephant. But since the grown-ups were not able to understand it, I made another drawing: I drew the inside of the boa constrictor, so that the grown-ups could see it clearly. They always need to have things explained. My Drawing Number Two looked like this:
[Sorry, this image is no longer available.] ppa.jpg">
The grown-ups response, this time, was to advise me to lay aside my drawings of boa Constrictors, whether from the inside or the outside, and devote myself instead to geography, history, arithmetic and grammar. That is why, at the age of six, I gave up what might have been a magnificent career as a painter. I had been disheartened by the failure of my Drawing Number One and my Drawing Number Two. Grown-ups never understand anything by themselves, and it is tiresome for children to be always and forever explaining things to them."
,
well if its not a hat and its some kind of snail or something then he definately won't need to eat for a while.........he ehee ehe eh 
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