{"id":71507,"date":"2014-05-20T16:51:44","date_gmt":"2014-05-20T20:51:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=71507"},"modified":"2014-05-20T16:51:44","modified_gmt":"2014-05-20T20:51:44","slug":"wildlife-or-nor-woman-neither","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/05\/20\/wildlife-or-nor-woman-neither\/","title":{"rendered":"Wildlife, or Nor Woman Neither"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Babylone_3ans1\"<\/a>

A Chihuahua with a member of ordinary size. Photo: Abuk Sabuk, via Wikimedia Commons<\/p><\/div>\n

\n

What a piece of work is a man, how noble in reason, how infinite in faculties, in form and moving how express and admirable, in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god! the beauty of the world, the paragon of animals\u2014and yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust? Man delights not me\u2014nor woman neither, though by your smiling you seem to say so.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The text came up on my phone at 5:34 P<\/small>.M<\/small>.<\/p>\n

\u201cJust saw chihuahua with human-sized penis \ud83d\ude41 \u201d<\/p>\n

I tried to think of something comforting to say.<\/p>\n

\u201cDon\u2019t worry,\u201d I wrote back. \u201cHe can mate with bigger dogs!!\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201c:( \u201d came the response.<\/p>\n

In conference with another friend, Dan, later the same day, I mentioned this anomaly.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s at times like this one wonders how self-aware dogs are,\u201d he wrote. Then:<\/p>\n

\u201cI hope he knows\u201d<\/p>\n

Then:<\/p>\n

\u201cHe must know.\u201d <\/p>\n

Something about this sighting made me sad. Had the owners chosen this particular dog as an act of charity? Or maybe because they thought it was funny\u2014maybe the dog was a conversation piece, and was called Ron Jeremy, or Dirk Diggler, or maybe Dillinger. Was that better, or worse? Did the dog have medical trouble? Was he too big to breed with his own kind? Did they give him a codpiece in the winter, to go with his little Chihuahua coat?<\/p>\n

I woke up at two A<\/small>.M<\/small>. and thought about it for far too long. Then I did a very ill-advised Internet search, which, in the spirit of public service, I urge you not to do.<\/p>\n

Modern civilization is constantly coping with the frank, exuberant sexuality of dogs. We snicker, or we blush, or we ogle, and some of us pretend to be very matter-of-fact, which is the silliest of all. Putting a dog in a little outfit does nothing to neuter it. Although I guess neutering probably does.<\/p>\n

On the Disney Wiki, \u201cMan\u201d\u2014the killer of Bambi\u2019s mother and, later, the cause of the fire that devastates the forest\u2014is described thusly: \u201cBeing a mere hunter, Man is not truly evil by human standards, but from the perspective of the animals whom the film follows, he might as well be the Devil.\u201d Incidentally, \u201cMan\u201d was ranked twentieth on the American Film Institute\u2019s list of the top fifty film villains of all time. And he wasn\u2019t even exploiting an animal\u2019s deformity, that we know of.<\/p>\n

Of course, that Chihuahua\u2019s owners probably aren\u2019t, either. They probably love him, and care for him, and chose him, and, if they laugh a little now and then, it is with affection and in any case, he has no idea. \u201cThe dog seemed totally at ease,\u201d my friend said, when I questioned him later. \u201cBack pain notwithstanding.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What a piece of work is a man, how noble in reason, how infinite in faculties, in form and moving how express and admirable, in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god! the beauty of the world, the paragon of animals\u2014and yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust? Man […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":178,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13115],"tags":[13982,13981,1052,13984,13983,662,125,13985,9055],"class_list":["post-71507","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-our-daily-correspondent","tag-bambi","tag-chihuahuas","tag-dogs","tag-genitals","tag-humans","tag-men","tag-new-york-city","tag-penises","tag-pets"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nWildlife, or Nor Woman Neither<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Sadie Stein on the private lives of animals.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/05\/20\/wildlife-or-nor-woman-neither\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta 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