More news about monkey pox as federal health officials ban sales of prairie dogs and imports of African rodents. The CDC has congratulated Wisconsin officials in identifying the problem quickly.
The fact is, though, there should never have been a problem. I may sound like a broken record, but who wants vermin for a pet? Who wants to cuddle up with a prairie dog or a giant Gambian rat? And people are definitely cuddling up with them, because apparently there's some biting involved here.
I've never found rodents to be particularly interesting pets, with the exception of the more intelligent mice and rats. It seems to me that the larger the rodent, the dumber it is. Prairie dogs are pretty decent sized, and, well, giant Gambian rat kind of speaks for itself. Neither of these animals sounds particularly cute.
All this makes me wonder when people are going to learn that all these nasty diseases that are being spread around the world, be it monkeypox or SARS or even AIDS, wouldn't be such a problem if we as people hadn't done stupid things like wanting a pet prairie dog.
