Let's have a bite of that cute puppy

While without a doubt there are many much more important questions we should discuss, one thing I asked myself the other day is: Why is it that if we see a cute puppy, kitten or baby, we often have the reflex to squeeze it really hard? My good friend Paula goes even further and wants to bite really cute things. I remember one time we were in the lift with a mother who had an extra cute baby in her pram. Paula got all excited and screamed that she wanted to bite the baby into the feet! You can imagine how freaked out the mother was. Before Paula saw her new baby cousin for the first time she said that "he'd better watch out, because I'm gonna bite him so much he won't know what happend to him." I was a bit concerned for the child's safety.

I'm not saying it's a unnatural reaction- I get it too sometimes. I passed a guy yesterday who had probably about the world's second cutest puppy (I saw the cutest one the other day) and I noticed how I was clenching my teeth and felt like squeezing it. Which really makes me wonder who came up with the idea of installing this urge into people. Surely, it can't be good in any way. Some cute helpless baby or puppy comes along, all innocent and stuff, and happens to be so damn cute that someone squeezes it to death? So sad.

My friend Paula the baby feet biter is Brazilian and I always enjoy blaming weird things on her nationality. But that still wouldn't explain why even us Swiss, who are known to be sensible, have an expression which literally translates as "this is so cute I could eat it". And we like to use this one for babies particularly. Maybe we are all just nutcases.