Cute

 Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed a rustling in the leaves. It gave me pause. What could it be? Now my whole attention was drawn to this big reveal, and to my great relief, it was just a squirrel. A wild animal, to be certain, but not a rat. A rat would have elicited a much different reaction. Something from the "ewww" category, I would expect. Both are rodents. Both of them are prone to scurrying. Both of them are, research tells me, rarely infected with rabies. And yet, there I was, making an intra-species judgement based almost entirely on widely held public conceptions. 

I brought this up to my wife, and it didn't take us long to decide that the chief difference was the tail. That bushy back end found on a squirrel was head and shoulders above the hairless pink appendage on a rat's posterior. I went on to suggest that a squirrel sitting on his or her haunches was most likely scanning the area for nuts, while a rat in a similar pose was obviously sending out a signal to his rat minions to attack. I was assigning motives to lower life forms, which I figured might be a sign of thinking way inside the box. 

We humans tend to revel and respect cute, while those that toil away in the shade of revulsion never receive the benefit of the doubt. As proof of concept, my wife mentioned the challenge facing a Corgi getting from place to place on those stubby little legs. It was her suggestion that the addition of ninety-six more legs would be quite a boon, causing me to question whether a centipede Corgi would still fall into the cute category. She held fast. It was her assertion that it might be even cuter, to which I had to agree, unless the stitches were visible. 

You've got a foot in the door if you're cute. Kittens, puppies, and all manner of baby animals get a pass because of their relative fluffiness and lack of perceived threat. This can change as age peels away that air of helplessness, and the true nature of the beast can be fully displayed. Pity the individual who has little else but cute to offer over the course of a lifetime. Squirrels have that going on, however, and they tend to own it. That is precisely what gets otherwise intelligent adults to stoop down and offer corn chips to an animal that is most likely carrying just as much disease as his little ratty cousin. We just feel a whole lot better about giving them food because "at least they're not rats." What is the nastiest thing we can say about pigeons? We call them "rats with wings." I've never heard anyone call a rat a "flightless pigeon." 

So what can we do? I am not sure I can promise not to flinch whenever I see a rat, but I can make an effort to make a similar scene when confronted by a squirrel. My wife and I are also looking into breeding a bushy-tailed rat. 

Wouldn't that be cute?