A brief rant about squirrels

I was on Cute Overload when I saw this picture and the accompanying editorial on the general goodness of squirrels.

And I thought to myself, "oh hell no". Squirrels are neither cute nor nice. Also, their claws aren't the problem. The real issue is their teeth. You may find yourself asking, "Liz, how do you know this? Squirrel teeth?"

I have a history with squirrels. For a long time I was a bat biologist. To catch bats we string up "mist nets" which are nets about 12M high and 12M across and about the consistency of hair nets. Bats fly through large forest passages by memory and sight and get caught in the nets rather easily if they are set correctly. Know what else gets caught in these nets if we're not careful? Squirrels. Not normal squirrels either. We get Flying Squirrels which are nocturnal. They're roughly the size of a rat and meaner than a hungry lion. And they have these teeth that are made to gnaw and jaws as strong as an iron clamp. Their teeth didn't actually break my skin, but when I'd get done extracting one of these things from the net, my hand resembled ground beef.

And then, we had to put the nets back up. After the squirrel had been in it, struggling against the net to get loose and then struggling against the net and me to be free. These nets are fragile as heck. I'm working with a hair net basically. Have you ever tried to straighten out a hairnet after a rodent had been into it? It's roughly like trying to sew together two hairbrushes. In the dark. With a hand that feels like ground beef. Now, you try that and then tell me, are squirrels cute?