As I walked from the parking garage to the building I work in, a furry creature darted out, the quick-moving ball of fur seemed to dart towards me. I jumped. The voice in my head shrieked, “Yikes! Rat!” Then the critter turned away from me to seek cover back in the foliage behind the parking garage, thus revealing his big, bushy tail. The voice in my head calmly said, “Oh, it is a squirrel.”
As I continued to walk towards my office, my brain seized the free moment to contemplate why the thought of a rat startles me, while the realization that the creature is actually a squirrel provides me a sense of relief. I considered the facts:
- The two creatures are cousins in the rodent family. Yep, squirrels are rodents.
- By a farmer’s definition, both are considered pests. A pest in a farmer’s eyes is anything that destroys or harms crops. So, no your little brother is not a pest, but a squirrel is.
- Both can spread diseases, including rabies. That said, rats bear the cross of spreading the bubonic plague. Yet, I cannot say that this is the differentiator, as I did not jump and think, “I am going to get the plague!”
- Squirrels feast on nuts, seeds and tree buds. Rats feed on garbage and love human food. The fear of finding a rat in one’s food source is real. Squirrels do not pose this threat. This could be a key differentiator on our society’s perspective on the two. From personal experience, I can tell you that squirrels also love figs. The squirrel’s in my backyard steal all my beloved figs off the tree, but that is different than finding a half eaten box of cereal thanks to a rat. All of that said, I wasn’t carrying a lunch on my walk into the office, so again, why jump at the thought of a rat, but not have the same reaction to a squirrel.
- Both can get into one’s attic and cause lots of problems. I personally, only experienced this in one home that I have owned, and it was all at the hands of a single squirrel.
What is then? My working theory after my encounter with the squirrel mistaken for a rat is the tail. Yes, the body of a rat and a squirrel look roughly the same when both are down on four legs in scurry mode. The tail on the other hand provides a completely different look. The tail of a rat is thin and seems scaly and gross. The tail of a squirrel is bushy and down right adorable, perhaps among the most adorable of tails among all mammals. Perhaps, it is not the face of the rat that we fear, rather the tail.