A Problem in Favoritism

How do we come by our likes and dislikes in the minor animal domain? Walking through a hillside meadow in September, I became suddenly conscious that I was sweeping aside grasshoppers in a spirit of irritation, yet at nearly every step casting a look ahead to avoid treading upon a cricket. Why, as between these two saltatory insects, should I be constantly protecting the one and condemning the other? Mentioning the circumstance among a company of friends, I found that every one present shared my peculiar bent, but not one could account for it in himself. The theory of literary association was discarded when inquiry disclosed the fact that only three of us, and those the older members of the party, were familiar with the fable which represents the grasshopper as wasting all the summer in pleasure while the cricket takes its rightful part in the struggle for existence.

And where did the fable itself come from? Facts were made before fables, and the author of this one was not creating a prejudice, but only reflecting and embalming one already existing among the people of his day. Have the naturalists ever put on record any evidence that, the grasshopper is really an idler and a parasite, or the cricket a self-respecting producer?

We set traps and spread poisons for rats, but we punish Tabby when she catches a squirrel. Why? Because the rat invades our dwellings and robs cellar and pantry, while the squirrel keeps aloof and confines his thieving to the fields and outbuildings? The distinction is not well taken. Both are conscienceless rogues, the essential difference between them being that the rat has the greater courage.

Is it a question of voice? The grasshopper has none, while the cricket appeals to us with her companionable little chirp. The rat is silent and stealthy except when terrified, and then emits a pathetic squeal; but the squirrel, from his safe lookout in a tree-top, chatters and scolds at us like any common shrew. And if there be a charm in the mere possession of a voice, why do we deplore the coming of the seventeen-year locust, which can outshrill the cricket sevenfold, and almost drown the clamor of an excited squirrel? Or why should we cherish the lady-bug while trying to exterminate the spider, neither of which can utter a sound?

What gives us our sense of loathing for the garden toad, demurely useful little neighbor that he has proved himself, while his second cousin the frog, who seems to do nothing but play the dandy and the braggart, is uniformly treated as a good fellow? If the toad gulped and croaked all night long, and made his home in slimy pools instead of in the melon-patch, would they reverse their present order in our esteem?

Does the trouble with one class of wilding creatures lie in the familiarity which breeds contempt? If it were the grasshopper, instead of the cricket, that warmed her toes at the kitchen hearth; if the squirrel intruded upon the family privacy while the rat affected only the hedgerows and stonewalls; and if the frog grew more affable and moved up into the hop-toad’s habitat, should we find our emotions chilling toward the former objects of our partiality because we were treated to an overdose of their society?

We speak of the ‘patient’ snail, and love to watch him as he toils along, Arab-like, with his house on his back. The caterpillar, also patient and a crawler, arouses only the sentiment of disgust. Yet the snail remains all his life the plodding clod we see him today; whereas the instincts of the caterpillar impel him ever toward a finer and more glorious estate, in which he commands readily the admiration we are so reluctant to yield him when he is only in the stage of promise.

We wage war upon the bat, but encourage friendly relations with the woodpecker; yet of the two we are deeper in the bat’s books for his beneficences. Is this inequity a matter of color? Does the gayety of the one inspire, and the sombreness of the other depress and repel us? Then to what shall we attribute the good-natured tolerance, and even interest, with which so many of us regard the black ant, and our abhorrence of his red kindred?

All this must point to something; but to what? In its outlook upon the lesser world, is the mind of man occupied by a faculty called reason, which is subject to the operation of definite laws; and if so, how do they explain such phenomena of attraction and repulsion as are typified in the cases I have cited? Or is a part of the mind simply set apart as a harbor for predilections and antipathies which defy any logical interpretation whatsoever?