Hortense is a small green monster with a big appetite that appears in The Sesame Street Family Album 1975 yearbook.
For the April page, Hortense follows Cookie Monster, Herry Monster, and Grover during the story "The Monsters' Picnic." Contributing to a lesson in relational concepts, Hortense helps demonstrate the word "in" by being a stowaway in the monsters' picnic basket. As a result, all the food has relocated to in Hortense's protruding belly. Undeterred, the larger Cookie and Herry devour the basket and picnic blanket respectively while Grover tries to locate the nearest hot dog cart.
Though this is the character's only named appearance, Hortense's design is based on one of the Anything Muppet monsters in a photo from The Sesame Street 1974 Activity Calendar. Initially popping up for the August pages, the photo would later be utilized in several Sesame Street style guides. As a result, she made occasional other illustrated appearances such as the cover of the Monster coloring book, a set of Alphabet Cards, receiving her green color in Monsters Come in Many Colors!, as part of the ensemble in Follow the Monsters!, and at the end of Seasons of the Year.
