This Squirrel is Finnished

Sure, there’s some comedy in this. But that’s not what grabbed our attention.

As the link states, a little-known Finnish opera singer was riding his bike days before his opera’s world premiere when he tumbled to the ground at the hands of a wayward squirrel. While Esa Ruuttunen was suffering minor injuries sailing over the handlebars of his Huffy, the squirrel wasn’t so lucky, as it had triggered the wreck by trying to jump through the bike’s spokes.

Yeah, I hear this is how Terrell Owens got out of going to practice, too.

While mildly interesting, the reason the YABNews desk has brought this to your attention is not because we love Finnish operas, Scandinavian cycling, or daring woodland creatures, but to highlight a public interest issue that has plagued us for far too long. Go ahead and open the Yahoo News link in another window. Looks like some solid reporting courtesy of Reuters, no? A solid recap of events, a catchy title, and hey, even a picture of the squirrel –

Wait a minute.

- The caption under the squirrel? “A tree squirrel forages for food on a cloudy day in Karachi, Pakistan August 17” Yeah, that’s a great squirrel and all, and I guess it’s a relatively recent photo of said squirrel, but Pakistan? It’s a Pakistani squirrel?

Assuming squirrels are not capable of purchasing tickets for air travel, this squirrel was 3,155 miles from the scene of the crime. Other than the fact that it is the same species of one of the parties involved, it’s really not a relevant picture. Using similar logic, why isn’t there a picture of, say, Dikembe Mutombo? After all, is he not of the taxonomic same classification as Esa Ruuttunen?

Now YAB is not advocating that we demand a picture of the actual squirrel that was involved in bringing down Ruuttunen. He’s dead, and I don’t think Finnish authorities routinely perform taxidermy in the name of journalistic integrity. We’re cool with that. But it brings another observation to mind, of which we’ve been meaning to write about for a while.

Last week, while driving down Constitution Ave in DC, I noticed a couple of tourists watching as a squirrel continually rounded the trunk of a tree. Sure, it was interesting because of its hyperactivity – but Geez – you’re in the City of Monuments. There’s cooler stuff to look at. Regardless, the tourist pulled out his camera and began snapping frantically at the squirrel. Say cheese, you little park rat.

But why do we take pictures of squirrels??? We’ve all done it at some point in our lives, right? Probably when you were younger, on a camping trip or something – you decided that it would be cool if you could get a picture of that squirrel. Maybe it’s hunter’s mentality. The thrill of getting a full-frame squirrel on film – yeah – that’ll satisfy my primitive and inherent human urges.

But then what happens? You develop your film, and amid all the other nice vacation and personal memories, here’s a glossy 3” x 5” print of some squirrel that didn’t do anything cool, and even if he were doing something cool, you now have a still-life representation of whatever he was doing, which seems, well, less cool. Just fathom the millions of prints being processed every year of throwaway photos of things like squirrels. There’s a reason they don’t make the cut for your photo albums. They’re wasted pictures. And yet, seemingly, everyone’s taken a picture of a squirrel in their lifetime.

This is why digital cameras were invented. So we can get that rush associated with taking a picture of a squirrel, slap ourselves for such a silly idea for a photograph, and then immediately delete it without having to pay for a print we didn’t want in the first place. Yep, that’s why.