Return of the red-crested tree rat

Having just finished reading Edward Hoagland’s new collection of essays, which circles obsessively around the themes of the end of nature and the author’s own mortality, it was heartening to read about the rediscovery in Colombia of a creature last seen in 1898 and long thought extinct. Cute, isn’t it?

Oddly, it’s an article called Red-crested tree rat is adorable, not extinct that features a less adorable, more ratty-looking photo—as if one of the creatures I find around the garbage cans had gone to the beauty salon and gotten some henna.