UPDATE: Some people told us these are chipmunks, and after a looong investigation, we discovered these are ground squirrels, which are basically chipmunks. Either way...look how cute!
Sometimes you've got to take a break from the politics, the breaking news about Justin Bieber and the fact that most of the country has been plunged into terrible weather due to a polar vortex and just look at photos of squirrels having a little play-fight.
Full disclosure: we know how ridiculous it sounds that we are insisting you look at these photos. But we don't know if it's the fact that we are losing our minds waiting for the weekend or we're just generally insane, but when we stumbled upon these pics, we could not stop laughing.
Look! These two cute squirrels are having a little play fight! One of them is like, choking the other one! Kind of like Homer Simpson choking Bart (we did a little side-by-side comparison for your amusement):
But they look happy, like they're two brothers who are wrestling until their mom realizes what they're doing and has to break them apart to lecture them about good playing and bad playing. And according to those at Jasper National Park in Alberta, Canada, where these photos were taken, the squirrels were indeed fighting for funsies and not for, you know, murdersies.
But does any of the whys and wheres and whats matter? Honestly? No, not when it comes to pictures of animals doing something silly. In fact, we implore CNN and other news channels to highlight these squirrels for 10 seconds today, just so they can remind viewers that hey, sometimes the world isn't awful. Sometimes, two squirrels wrestle each other and it's adorable.
Thank you, squirrels. Thank you for reminding us that the universe isn't so bad because there are animals like you doing stuff like this.