May 28, 2011

Who's afraid of a puppy?!

One night, a woman came to buy mangoes from Neene, saw Levi, gave a shout, and jumped away from him. Levi, who’d oringally just ambled over to sniff hello, started barking. This caused the woman to really panic, and she made a running leap onto the bantaba.Not the wisest choice, if she’d known how weak our bantaba is, but nothing collapsed.

Her reaction got me thinking about people’s fears of dogs, even when the dog is a cute little puppy who clearly belongs to the family--and why would any family keep a dog who bit mango customers? So I tried to think of an animal that I would irrationally fear and I realized that if I came across someone who kept a pet shrew I would react exactly as this woman had. If a pet shrew came running to greet me, I would fling myself onto the nearest tall surface and pray the shrew would not remember it is capable of climbing. I would not pause, not even for a second, to think, "Obviously this shrew is someone’s pet and why would someone keep a shrew that bit people?"

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