Pretty much anyone who knows me knows that I am passionate about gender parity in language and particularly about eliminating the false generic masculine (which is using masculine language to refer to beings of unknown or unspecified gender). If they know me well, they know that I often focus on gender attribution for nonhumans, in real life and in children’s books, and if they spend a lot of time with me outdoors, that this often comes up in reference to squirrels.

And so, this story:

Walking from the train, I beheld a squirrel which elegantly poked its head up from the grass and then dashed across my path and up a tree, carrying what looked like part of a cardboard ice cream carton. I turned to the random person walking near me, and we joked briefly about whether it had found something to read or something to eat.

“Or to use for making a nest*,” I added.

“Yeah, that’s what I was thinking,” she replied, “Nesting material.” And then she laughed and added, suddenly, “I bet he thought he’d won the … or she, thought she’d won the jackpot!”

A beautiful example of the unthinking sexist trope wherein nonhuman animals default to male** coming up against the sexist (but slightly more accurate***) trope wherein nonhuman parents default to female**** and colliding, inside someone’s head.

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*It turns out that squirrel nests in the branches of trees are actually called dreys (or drays). Drey nests are distinguished from cavity nests, or dens, which are inside something, such as a tree hollow.

**With certain specific exceptions that default to female with astonishing regularity, among them cats, hippos, kangaroos, elephants, cows***** (but not always chickens), and, of course, parents.

***In terms of parents apt to be encountered with their offspring.

****With the exception of seahorses. And maybe penguins. And people who persist in the first trope despite all evidence to the contrary, like the person a friend of mine saw at the zoo once who apparently exclaimed, “Look at the gorilla nursing his baby!”******

*****It was actually years before I understood that cows were only one part of a species. “What do you mean, they’re *all* female? That can’t be right…”

******My own example of this is the time I saw a gorilla at the zoo, lying on its back before the window, legs splayed, both feet up against the glass. And a man said to his child, “Hey, look at him!” And all I could think (but didn’t say) was, “If that gorilla were actually male, I think you might be trying to stop your child from looking…”