The Better Looking Rat

 

    The squirrel. The better-looking rat. We are superficial when it comes to animals. What does it mean to be a cute animal? Do the more aesthetically pleasing ones have more human-like snouts? Do we compare them to Willy the gray-haired store clerk, or Cindy the motherly schoolteacher? Is it just me or is the movement of the squirrel much like a furry lizard? Not the face, the face is very mammalian, but the rest of the body that has this herky-jerky quality of movement.

    She sits in front of me, as I nosh some nuts. These are ready to eat right away, but you are the prepper. The animal version of the person who stocks ammo, and freeze-dried food waiting for nuclear winter to strike. The one who hasn’t heard about the new “safer” nuclear reactors that Bill Gates is pushing…

Alright then. Prep away.

    I flick a nut at the upright rodent. It’s as if I zapped her with a remote control. She pauses in frame. I am suddenly conscious of my breathing, as I look at this tiny statue before me. She comes to life and turns first her eyes side to side, then head. She doesn’t want anyone to know about her secret stash. As any good prepper would she avoids detection. She skips forward towards the nut in an amazing movement involving every muscle and becomes a statue once more. She thinks: move quickly enough it and it will hypnotize him and any other watcher. Am I sure that doll wasn’t already this close? It looks the same just nearer.

    I got my eye on you squirrel. I am the eye in (on) the sky (bench) looking at you, I can read your mind. I blink twice. The nut and squirrel are gone. Was it my imagination? Is this like when you look at a light and you get those purplish-blue flashes in your vision? Like that, except I looked at a gray tree for too long and I’m seeing squirrels everywhere? I enjoy asking, it saves on answers, or even more taxing: reasons.

    Out of side eye, I see her, or doppelganger (is it offensive to say all squirrels look the same? I know you’re not supposed to say that about humans, but other animals are fine, right?) Attached to a tree blended into the watercolours of the fall eve shadows cheeks gorging on a nut. She isn’t a prepper after all…

 

    In the distance I see more squirrels scaling up trees with talons more akin to birds than mammals. I could just sit and watch them doing whatever they are doing for hours. Why is this so entertaining?