As I walked around Boston Commons, I saw a curious thing: Squirrel photo sessions. People feeding squirrels. People gleefully pausing to try and interact with squirrels. It was baffling to me. Why were people so excited to interact with these rodents? Why were they so excited to potentially touch an animal that I know more, as an American, as a potential vector of disease or cause for people to swerve their cars or the creature that hides acorns in crawl spaces? There were excited to see what I considered so common.
I wanted to know if there was something I was missing, which led me to Reddit post from an international visitor preparing for a Boston trip.
It’s my first time visiting the states and I am insanely excited about squirrels
To someone from Australia, squirrels are exotic, even if that’s not how I see them. Meanwhile, there is an American tourist somewhere feeding monkeys in Thailand that locals are trying to get rid of. Exotic is just a perspective.
I would love to travel abroad more to get to see things and animals that I’ve never seen before, but maybe I could keep that kind of mentality stateside. Maybe I could walk through each day like a tourist, seeing everything around me with fresh eyes. How could I take a step back to recognize what’s special in the common?
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