Speaking of tourist hordes...

One of the things you can't help but notice when you're out and about around the Mall (the big park with all the monuments and memorials, not a shopping center) in DC is the popularity of squirrels among tourists. Several years ago I helped host a meeting in DC, and a colleague from Luxembourg mentioned that he had done a hop-on, hop-off bus tour of the main sites around town. When I asked him what he liked best, he thought for a minute, then perked up and said "zee leettle aneemals wis zee beeg, booshy tails!" Come to think of it, when I was a kid we took a family road trip vacation around the West, and I remember taking countless pictures of squirrels on the grounds of the California state capitol in Sacramento (I guess we had a lot more rabbits and rattlesnakes than squirrels where I grew up).

How things change...now that we have a house with a garden, squirrels are nothing more to us than destructive little rodents who dig up our yard and eat our plants. The thought that anyone would actually get a kick out of seeing these little monsters just boggles the mind. But then again, when we visit Wisconsin I get excited every time we see a deer, which lots of folks there think are way more destructive to gardens than squirrels. And I can't imagine what Venetians think of the tourists who willingly choose to be mobbed by pigeons in Piazza San Marco. So I guess most places have their animals that they take for granted but that others think are the greatest thing since sliced bread. (For us in Basel it was probably storks, or maybe hedgehogs.)

But still...squirrels?