I Just Don’t

Now, as anyone who knows me will tell you, I have an uncontrollable fear of rats. Seeing a rat, especially the dirty brown ones that crawl around in sewers or inside Cavendish Square, fills me with an immense fear of dread, and will have me screaming like a young school girl who has just had her copy of Twilight taken away by her mom.

I don’t think I’ve ever really been attacked by a rat to be honest, but I’m pretty sure that running into one, much like running into a Great White Shark or the South African singer Danny K, would be an unpleasant experience not worth repeating.

Which makes me a hypocrite of the highest order, as I realized this week.

You see, we have a park across the road from us, where I will often be found running around in multi-coloured tanktops and ill-fitting shorts, desperately trying to lose the excess weight around my stomach and thighs, which currently has me resembling a large oven-baked potato. It is in this park, where I will regularly collapse to the ground – partly from exhaustion, but mostly due to a weak character, bitterly disappointed that it took only five minutes of jogging before my lungs decided to resign, and wondering whether I would be able to crawl back to the loving but judging arms of The Girlfriend.

It’s usually while compassionate passers by are calling the Netcare 911 guys to come and resuscitate me, that the squirrels will come along. These ones in particular are pretty ballsy, and will literally come to within a few inches of my puffy, clammy face, curious to see what the wheezing and incoherent curses are all about.

The thing is, I don’t really have an issue with it, as they are just squirrels after all, right? I mean, they are lovely and cuddly and friendly, and are often the supporting heroes in children’s cartoons or stories written by old women with cats, sometimes specifically for old women with cats.

But has anyone ever bothered looking closely at a squirrel?

Correct me if I’m wrong, but squirrels can be best described as having brown / grey fur, long snouts, beady eyes, and long elongated front teeth which often protrude from said snouts. Mmm, where have we seen that before?

Is it a squirrel... or is it a rat?

If I were a rat, I would be pretty disappointed with the double standards society has put in place here. On the face of it, two incredibly similar creatures are being positioned on completely opposite sides of the social spectrum. Sure, there are stories of rats being aggressive, biting people and generally spreading diseases, but are you saying there are no bad seeds in the squirrel camp?

You have to believe there are some arsehole squirrels out there, who will scratch through your rubbish, nibble on your toes and spread the plague if given half the chance. Yet these guys are still getting the plum roles on cartoons and other fictional stories. Rats on the other hand, are always depicted as the bad guys, the ones who will steal from the rabbits in Magic Forrest, or lie about the whereabouts of the little field mouse they have kidnapped.

I guess it’s a bit like Apartheid was in a way, where white people were put on a pedestal, and black people were given the poor treatment, despite the fact that we all looked similar, and are essentially one and the same.

I think the time has come to address this now though. Sure, rats and squirrels have some ideological differences, but they are both rodents at the end of the day. Let’s ditch our obvious prejudice, and treat them both equally from now on, one way or the other.

There is a rat who lives by himself downstairs where we keep all the bins. I’m going to go down there later and give him an acorn to nibble on. Will let you know how it goes.

Oakes signing off.

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