I’m losing my ability to distinguish among a certain group of animals. Some are rodents but some are not.
Starting with hamsters and gerbils — I can’t tell the difference — lately I’ve blanked out on names from all sorts of animals with cute noses and whiskers.
I’m still OK with raccoons but that’s strictly because raccoons have those rings around their eyes, and brandish stripey tails. Hedgehogs and porcupines…I don’t think I know the difference between them but they both are covered in spines. And I am grateful.
When did this thing, this early onset animal confusion, kick in? I suspect it was the day I first noticed a capybara on my computer screen. Since that capybara, I’ve become desperately muddled about badgers and beavers, muskrats, meerkats, ferrets and polecats. Mongooses (mongeese?) Stoats and other weasels, except in winter when the stoat transforms itself into an ermine. Ermines, I get.
Sometimes I am unable to identify otters, and that is truly shameful since an otter’s adorability is aww-some beyond the cuteness of other small, furry animals. And if all you show me is the face of a sloth, I freeze.
To fill the gaps in my brain, I must invent an all-purpose term for furry wild animals. I need to create a term as successful as the time I was in Brittany with my cousin Ruth, when we were among people who did not speak English. I found that the word “chose” (“thing”) gave me a type of French fluency I’d never had before. I simply threw “chose” in whenever I couldn’t remember a specific word and I did OK.
I’m thinking Fuzzies. What do you think?
From your first sentence I assumed this was going to be about politicians.
You’re comment is a lot funnier than my problems ID-ing animals.