On my way home from my usual morning latte with Pluvialis, I met this little man wandering confusedly down the midline of the road, following the white line like it might lead him somewhere other than into the tread of the tyres on the number 4 bus. He's a baby woodmouse. He weighs 5g. He's having a snack of granola right now. I may let him go. If I can bear it.
Update: As many people who know and endure me can attest, one of the pantheon of arguments Xtin Hates Most in the World is an environmental argument which I call The Argument From Cuteness. It proceeds from the fact that something is incredibly adorable to the conclusion that we ought to save the environment. Quite often it does so while speaking words that have nothing whatever to do with the cuteness, but on closer inspection you realise that the argument proceeds only from the cuteness. My beef with the Argument from Cuteness is that it is not an argument at all. Cuteness almost certainly drives people to action and engages them with animals. All good things. Which are not themselves arguments which explain anything about what sort of attitude we should have toward wild spaces or ecology or whatever.
That being said, my woodmouse (conservation status: least concern, as in, you're kidding, right? There are millions of the little buggers) is now asleep with his itty itty itty paws over his grain-of-cous-cous sized nose in the corner of a 3" square box which once held a pot of styling wax.
Save the world! It has the cutest mice ever.
1 comment:
I agree with you about that whole argument from cuteness, even though from a PR standpoint, it ain't a bad idea if you can bring some cuteness to bear while advocating for an environmentalist perspective sometimes. But to rely on it too much sets you up to be wiped away by the Cold Hard Practicalities when push comes to shove.
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