Like the sidewalk artist I posted a few days ago, this is one of those series of pictures I got e-mailed to me and thought was cute. Dunno the source, so I hope I'm just spreading warm fuzzies (wouldn't want to contribute to 'illegal sites.' Got another spam trying to infect me with Sober X., this time with a bullshit FBI source and another of the variations on the subject line Snopes warns of. Ah, the milk of human kindness.)
The lady in these pictures has one of those dogs I consider rodents. I was disappointed when Barley the Dog-Faced Boy only turned out to be big. He goes probably 70 lbs, but I had him sized up (as a puppy at the pound) for a three digit dog. His temporary sister fulfilled my size requirements but she had a fetish for kicking Barley's ass, and we had to find another home for her.
But squirrels, I like them. I have relatives who consider them pests, mainly (I suspect) because they've never seen rats. In a suburban sprawl environment you don't get the kind of rat infestations you get in a dense, urban area, but that doesn't mean you don't have some Rodent Hatred in your DNA. I like squirrels, so I guess it's almost a natural corollary that I detest small dogs, especially ones Kelly Osbourne or Za Za Gabor can carry like they're a fashion accessory.
Proper dogs, in my few, are the kind too big for that by the time they're weaned. The squirrel lady also has cancer, if you can't sympathize with squirrels. She rescues the animals because it's therapeutic. Or she thinks it's therapeutic, which amounts to the same thing.
A girl I briefly dated (after carrying a torch for a long time) in high school had a father who fed the squirrels. He was a no-nonsense guy (not so hot for me at the time, he saw right through me, but I think his daughter did too, and neither of them were having it). He didn't see the point of putting out seed and trying to keep the squirrels away from it in favor of birds. He'd fill birdfeeders, but he also poured lumps of seed on several stumps in his yard.
Another lovely couple I know not only feeds squirels, they put the food (including upright ears of corn to encourage the squirrels to stand anthropomorphically) right outside their dining room window. Just as that girl's Dad (I think) really preferred the squirrels to the birds, this couple prefers the squirrels to the TV.
I imagine it's a short leap to go from admiring squirrels in the yard to domesticating them (or 'rescuing' them if you prefer that terminology).
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