That photo was my workplace desktop wallpaper for DAYS. Which is really saying something. I even left it up when a potential hire was doing some testing at my desk.

My family have always fed rodents in the wild, which is why I was so surprised to find out that they like knapsacks. See, I never knew that.

Heh.

If they were black, they’d also be similar to the squirrels that ACTUALLY ATTACKED ME ONCE in Vancouver’s Stanley Park in 1995. They were most assuredly as moth-eaten as the ones pictured above (despite being, you know, still alive), and I’m pretty sure they hungered for human flesh. Or my sandwich. I didn’t care to stick around and find out which. Those things will stalk you with robotic determination, their bloodshot eyes bugging out of oozing sockets, limbs rigid with disease, fur emerging in tufts between patches of scabby flesh — and these things — these exhibitions of God’s neglect — will WALK UP YOUR LEG. (Possibly using ropes, harnesses and fixed anchors? It is the west coast after all.) And then, I’m quite certain, they’ll eat your face.

(This memory has in fact resulted in me waking up screaming.)