I had the worst cognitive dissonance over squirrels.
Naturally, growing up with these, one knew that the default color for squirels was orange - y'know, bears are brown, wolves are grey, hares are grey in the summer and white in winter, and foxes and squirrels are orange. Then, living in the US for a couple of decades one got used to the fact that squirrels are mostly grey, but there is just enough of a hint of orange in them that one wondered if that's what them being orange had meant all along.
But it really didn't occur to me that they might just be different squirrels, so I never looked it up, and never figured out the obvious - until I happened to be in Russia and run into a squirrel of glorious bright shade with not the tiniest hint of grey hiding the vividness of the color. And felt much, much better.
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Naturally, growing up with these, one knew that the default color for squirels was orange - y'know, bears are brown, wolves are grey, hares are grey in the summer and white in winter, and foxes and squirrels are orange. Then, living in the US for a couple of decades one got used to the fact that squirrels are mostly grey, but there is just enough of a hint of orange in them that one wondered if that's what them being orange had meant all along.
But it really didn't occur to me that they might just be different squirrels, so I never looked it up, and never figured out the obvious - until I happened to be in Russia and run into a squirrel of glorious bright shade with not the tiniest hint of grey hiding the vividness of the color. And felt much, much better.
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However, unlike yours, ours don't turn white in the wintertime.
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