The Uncanny Valley

"I really wish you wouldn't wear that thing on campus." Sarah plucked a sticker from Sunshine's back reading Fur is murder! "Last time I took a whole can of red paint for you."

Sunshine looked at the sticker Sarah had removed from her fur cloak. "I wouldn't be showing the saint proper respect if I let her hame sit around and gather dust. I'm blessed to wear her holy pelage."

"Yeah, and that's another thing, most humans don't regard wearing the skin of a dead person to be honoring them."

"But WE do. You'll just have to explain it to them."

"Next time bring your keyer and you can explain it yourself. I'm sick of talking about Claravian funerary rituals to literally everyone that walks by."

Sunshine looked back at the field. The teams were filing out for half time. "This is an interesting game. What's it called again?"

"Football," said Sarah.

"But they aren't using their feet very much, except for all the running."

Sarah shrugged. "Honestly I don't know why we call it that. There's another sport that's also called 'football', well by people from other countries, anyway, that involves a lot more kicking."

"What's THAT!" Sunshine barked, gesturing with her muzzle down at the field.

"Oh that's just the college mascot, the Erickson College Coyote." A man in a coyote costume, wearing a baseball hat and T-shirt with the school's logo on it, was capering around the field.

"And why... is it on its hind feet?" asked Sunshine, a nervous tremor in her voice.

"It's just a guy in a costume. Wait, are you afraid of it?"

"No, it's just--" Sunshine gestured with her forepaw at her whiskery muzzle and erect motile ears, "And then he has--" she pointed at Sarah's arms and legs. "It's... Unsettling."

"This coming from the woman wearing a three-thousand year old dead person's pelt as a winter jacket."

"Hay! Don't forget you're as strange to us as we are to you."

"Fair enough," Sarah sighed. "We humans have this thing that happens when we see something that's almost human but not quite. It's a feeling of revulsion we call 'The Uncanny Valley.' Basically, if you take a creature that isn't human and gradually make it more and more human-looking, it gets more and more appealing, but when it's almost but not perfectly human, there's a fear reaction because we think it SHOULD be human but we know it isn't. Maybe you're feeling the monkey fox equivalent to the uncanny valley."

"Maybe you're right," said Sunshine, building up the courage to examine the mascot. "So why does his hat not cover his ears? Why cover your head but leave the most sensitive parts exposed? Ears need the most protection from cold and sun." She gestured with her tail at the loose part of the hame wrapped around her ears against the November chill.

"I don't know," Sarah admitted.

"And why is he wearing a shirt if he already has fur to keep him warm? And why isn't he wearing pants, or shoes for that matter? Why cover only the upper body?"

"I told you, it's just a guy in a costume, a guy who goes to the same veterinary pharmacology class as I do. So you know what, Next Monday you come to class with me and you can ask him yourself."

"Maybe I will," Sunshine huffed.