This story was originally published on my vet school blog, “Wet Cleanup on Aisle 5.”
I almost ran over a Wyoming ground squirrel on the way home for lunch yesterday. This is nothing new, not because I’m a lousy driver, but because they are everywhere. And since it’s spring, half of them are babies, too young to realize that cars can smoosh them. To make matters worse, they’re cannibalistic, and will feast on their dead in the middle of the road. They also seem to have an unholy desire to fling themselves in front of oncoming tires at the last possible second. Fortunately, I think I’ve managed to smash only one of them in the fourteen years I’ve lived here.
I kind of like the little guys, despite the fact that they’re almost universally reviled. I’ve never really figured out why this is… I guess they’ve been known to eat garden plants, and their burrowing will mess up a fancy manicured lawn. I don’t plant tasty garden plants (precisely because they’ll get eaten), and my lawn is pretty well wild. So the squirrels and I get along just fine.
The fleas they carry are vectors for bubonic plague, which, I think, makes a pretty strong case for disliking them, but I’ve never heard anyone use that as an excuse for exterminating ground squirrels. I think it has more to do with their gopher-like appearance. Guilty by association.
My neighbor makes a point of laying out poison for the “@*#$ gophers” every year. God forbid that a hapless neighbor dog chase one of those poisonous squirrels and have it for a snack. I tend to keep Cat Mandu inside more this time of year too. She only goes out on a leash, but I still don’t want to risk having her accidentally suck up some squirrel bait.
Maybe this is part of what makes veterinary-types different: I believe that every creature on the planet, not just those of the human variety, has the right to a good life. I take crickets outside, and I say hello to the spider in the corner of my bathroom. Even ticks deserve a good life, and lord knows I hate ticks!
I suppose I shouldn’t say every creature, because I might draw the line at, say, methicillin-resistant staph, but I do care about all creatures, great and small.
